Congratulations to Drs. Mike Dixon, Youbin Zheng and Thomas Graham!
The annual NSERC Synergy Award for Innovation recognizes outstanding collaborations between partner organizations and universities. Winners receive a $200'000 research grant.
Dr. Mike Dixon, Director of the Controlled Environment Systems Research Facility, along with Dr. Youbin Zheng and Dr. Thomas Graham, partnered with Intravision Light Systems Canada to develop tools that make farming more efficient and productive in urban and remote regions.
The product of this successful partnership is the GravityFlowTM system. This fully-automated, controlled environment system can grow food and medicinal plants all year long, independent of geographic location, while striving to use resources, such as water, wisely. This system integrated many lessons learned from the Photosystem ChambersTM developed at our Controlled Environment Systems Research Facility. The synergistic integration of expertise from our Drs. Dixon, Zheng and Graham, in collaboration with this industry partner, was instrumental in making this development possible.