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Imagine medical implants that last longer, cutting down the need for frequent surgeries for patients to replace worn-out joint replacements. Or understanding how people express emotion, which may lead to improved therapies for people with hearing impairments.

Thanks to the Ministry of Research and Innovation’s Early Researcher Awards (ERA) program, two scientists at Ryerson are able to further their research in these two areas, and expand their student research teams.

“We are extremely proud of Professors Habiba Bougherara and Frank Russo’s outstanding research achievements,” says Wendy Cukier, vice-president, research and innovation. “With this prestigious award, they can continue to advance their work and share their scientific knowledge with the next generation of talented researchers – our students.”

Each researcher will receive $140,000 from the provincial government and an additional $50,000 from the university over the next five years. Russo and Bougherara are among 71 emerging researchers and their teams at 19 institutions across Ontario who will have received a total of $10 million through the ERA program.

The highly competitive program helps promising, recently-appointed researchers in Ontario build their research teams, drawing from a talent pool of undergraduate students to postdoctoral fellows. The program’s goal is to improve Ontario’s ability to attract and retain the brightest research talent.

Bougherara and her research team will develop a new material that promises to give joint replacements a longer lifespan than traditional implants, which last 10 to 15 years. Her team will also be among the first in Canada to explore how to make these medical implants more “green,” leaving a smaller environmental footprint.

“We are developing stronger and lighter implants that are being made from a synthetic material derived from a blend of sheep’s wool and bacteria,” says Bougherara. “As a result, patients will have an implant that will last longer, lessening the need for often painful surgeries to replace old implants. We will also be able to expand the knowledge base of orthopedic surgeons who will need to learn how to work with these new materials.”

Undergraduate and graduate students from biology, biomedical and mechanical engineering disciplines will be involved with Bougherara’s cutting-edge research over the next five years. She will also develop community outreach activities in high schools aimed at attracting female students to the field of engineering through her ERA-funded work.

While Bougherara is examining ways to find ways to improve people’s mobility, Russo from the Department of Psychology, is delving into their minds to understand the intricate complexities of expressing emotion.

“Increasing evidence suggests that when you perceive emotion in communication, you are using your brain to reproduce the emotion that someone else is expressing at an unconscious level,” says Russo, director of the university’s SMART (Science of Music, Auditory Research and Technology) laboratory. “By engaging this neural-stimulation system, we are able to understand what others are feeling.”

Russo and a team of 12 student researchers, from the undergraduate to postdoctoral level, will track the eye movements, facial muscles, tone/pitch and brainwaves of participants conveying emotion through song and speech. Song will be a big part of his research since Russo says it is a “purer” representation of an emotion such as anger or sadness.

One day, the psychology professor hopes that his research on human emotion will enable researchers to develop better therapies for those who have communication deficits.

“If we have a more complete understanding of how senses are integrated, this may lead to solutions for developing therapies for people who have communication deficits.”

Russo’s students will be involved in all aspects of his research such as studying the brain waves of participants to see how they process speech and song. Not only will they be able to expand their research knowledge in the field of vocal emotional communication, he will also be constantly learning from his students.

“My own research has been enriched by every student I am working with. They all have their own way of looking at the world so that pushes me to view the same problem from a different perspective, which often leads to new insights.”