INRS researchers José Azaña and Roberto Morandotti awarded the Brockhouse Canada Prize

The Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) is proud to announce that Professors José Azaña and Roberto Morandotti are recipients of the prestigious Brockhouse Canada Prize for Interdisciplinary Research in Science and Engineering. The award given by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) recognizes outstanding Canadian teams of researchers from different disciplines who came together to engage in research drawing on their combined knowledge and skills, and produced a record of excellent achievements in the natural sciences and engineering in the last six years.

“We feel deeply honoured to receive this award as this is considered to be one of the most prestigious distinctions for scientific work in Canada. The award is particularly important to us because it recognizes a sustained collaborative and interdisciplinary effort between our two research groups at the INRS-EMT over 15 years,” say the researchers.

Professor Azaña, a specialist in optical fiber telecommunications and ultrafast photonics, holds the Canada Research Chair in Ultrafast Photonic Signal Processing. Professor Morandotti specializes in nonlinear optics and in the micro and nanofabrication of structures for photonics. He holds the Canada Research Chair in Intelligent Photonics. The two researchers cofounded the Ultrahigh Speed Light Manipulation Laboratory.

“This effort has led to key milestones towards the development of practical and efficient lightwave-based computing and information-processing systems, including both classical and quantum platforms, with capabilities well beyond those of present solutions. We believe our collaborative work will help in solving problems of critical importance to our society in Quebec, Canada and at a worldwide scale, enabling for instance, to accelerate the search for new medicines and treatments as well as for novel materials with unprecedented properties, or the development of greener and faster telecommunication networks,” they add.

“We are very proud that two of our professors, who bring together two areas of expertise, are receiving the NSERC Brockhouse Canada Prize this year. This is a significant recognition of the interdisciplinarity that characterizes INRS and that allows us to push back the boundaries of knowledge,” said Pascale Champagne, INRS Scientific Director and recipient of the Brockhouse Prize in 2019.

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INRS is a university dedicated exclusively to graduate level research and training. Since its creation in 1969, INRS has played an active role in Quebec’s economic, social, and cultural development and is ranked first for research intensity in Quebec and second in Canada. INRS is made up of four interdisciplinary research and training centres in Quebec City, Montreal, Laval, and Varennes, with expertise in strategic sectors: Eau Terre Environnement, Énergie Matériaux Télécommunications, Urbanisation Culture Société, and Armand-Frappier Santé Biotechnologie. The INRS community includes more than 1,400 students, postdoctoral fellows, faculty members, and staff.

Source :

Audrey-Maude Vézina

Service des communications de l’INRS

418 254-2156

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