Dr. Caputo, Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Tier 2 Canada Research Chair at York University, receives the Polanyi Prize in Chemistry.

How can we remove precious metals from the manufacturing process for plastics, pharmaceuticals and other industrial products? Dr. Caputo’s research aims to do so − and make production less expensive and more sustainable.

The reliance on precious metals such as palladium, platinum and rhodium to act as catalysts in industrial processes and energy production is a major problem, since they are highly rare and hugely expensive. In fact, these metals are so rare on Earth that serious consideration has been given to space projects to mine asteroids for them.

Dr. Caputo’s research is focusing on how to use “main group” chemicals – common, non-metal elements such as boron and phosphorous − to take their place as catalysts. This means manipulating them to create molecules that can mimic the high reactivity of precious metals.

The project needs to overcome the obstacles that make it difficult to form the kind of main-group molecules that can act as catalysts; one is their high sensitivity to air and water, making it necessary to synthesize novel molecules that remain stable in these conditions.

The research into these new molecules is designed to lead to cheaper, alternative catalytic processes that will boost the economy and help lead to more sustainable industries.

Dr. Hunt, Dunlap Fellow at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Toronto, receives the Polanyi Prize in Physics.

We know the Milky Way has hundreds of billions of stars, but from our vantage point among them, it’s been difficult to map where they are and what our galaxy really looks like. Dr. Hunt’s project is helping a global project do just that, more accurately than was previously thought possible.

Dr. Hunt is using a made-to-measure algorithm, PRIMAL, to sift through the enormous amount of data being sent back to Earth by the European Space Agency’s GAIA craft, which has been orbiting the sun since 2013 recording the positions and movements of stars in our galaxy in order to create a 3-D map of it. While GAIA has gathered data identifying around 1.5 billion stars, this is only around 1 per cent of the estimated total. But from that data, Dr. Hunt’s algorithm is working to recreate what the entire Milky Way looks like, even the parts we cannot see.

PRIMAL uses factors such as gravity and dark matter in combination with the data to model what the entire Milky Way must look like, including the centre bulge, the dense inner regions and the spiral arms – and can even predict what the metal content is in billions of stars. Although the GAIA mission will not be able to plot the exact location and velocity of every star, the algorithm will help scientists plot their age, shape and concentrations to great accuracy – producing a remarkable living picture of our galaxy.

Dr. Miranda Quintana is creating computational algorithms to gain new understanding of the properties of complex chemical compounds, potentially leading to game-changing advances such as zero-loss electricity transmission and safe handling of nuclear waste.

Although current computer-based studies into chemical reactions of compounds made of common elements are largely effective, they are extremely slow and inefficient when it comes to studying heavier elements. Dr. Miranda Quintana’s work focuses on examining the highly-complex electron interactions in strongly correlated systems (such as molecules containing rare-earth elements, the lanthanides and actinides), which hold enormous potential for industrial and energy uses.

He has helped to develop a computational framework called FANCI which, by combining mathematical data with coding, is designed to speed up the development, implementation, and testing of new theoretical tools to study general chemical systems.

The goal of the FANCI framework is to study previously inaccessible compounds and discover their properties, such as thermodynamics, magnetism, superconductivity, and whether they act as catalysts.

The potential practical uses are many. For instance, scientists have long sought to create materials that are superconductive at regular temperatures – currently they have to be cooled to near absolute zero to work – which would open the door to microscopic data storage devices, powerful quantum computers, and power transmission grids that work at near 100-per-cent efficiency, revolutionizing the power industry. The work could also create new types of nuclear fuel as well as safe and simple ways of disposing of nuclear waste.

Dr, Miranda, who came to Canada from Cuba in 2018 to conduct post-doctoral research, aims to make his computational methods user-friendly and transferable to other researchers for use in their own work looking for a new generation of materials and molecular devices with desired features.

Dr. Abdel-Qadir, Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine, University of Toronto and Cardiologist at Women’s College Hospital, receives the Polanyi Prize in Physiology/Medicine.

Dr. Abdel-Qadir’s research project will examine the suspected link between breast cancer treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation therapy with the development of atrial fibrillation, a serious heart rhythm abnormality with several adverse consequences.

In previous research on the rates of hospitalization for women with heart problems following breast cancer, Dr. Abdel-Qadir found a higher risk of atrial fibrillation (AF) in women who had had breast cancer than those who had not. His current research will now attempt to find evidence proving this link by studying data on all women in Ontario who were diagnosed with early stage breast cancer between 1988 and 2016, and comparing their data with women with no history of cancer.

People with atrial fibrillation, a type of irregular heart rhythm, are three to five times more likely to suffer a stroke, and are also more likely to develop heart failure or die prematurely. Although AF can carry debilitating symptoms such as shortness of breath and lethargy, many patients show no symptoms at all, which makes early detection of it vital.

If Dr. Abdel-Qadir’s research is able to show a direct link between breast cancer and AF, this could influence guidelines for monitoring and treating survivors, including regular surveillance and the use of blood thinners to reduce stroke risk.

Dr. Broom, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Chemistry and Biomolecular Sciences, University of Ottawa, receives the Polanyi Prize in Chemistry.

Enzymes are nature’s catalysts, accelerating the chemical reactions vital for the function of living organisms. But while the natural world has already constructed all the enzymes it needs, Dr. Broom is aiming to create new synthetic enzymes to help transform industry and energy production.

Dr. Broom’s research focuses on using powerful computing to design and produce new enzyme molecules that can act as high-performing catalysts to replace current catalysts such as toxic or expensive rare metals or naturally-occurring enzymes, whose power is limited. Starting with the traditional backbone structure of enzyme proteins, computer programs will attempt to design the highly-complex molecular structures that favour high catalytic properties, while deselecting elements that work against it.

Advances in computing in the 2000s have propelled the field of artificial enzymes forward, but so far practical progress has been limited to tweaking existing enzymes to improve their function. Dr. Broom’s project aims to push the boundaries in designing completely new synthetic enzymes that could lead to more productive and sustainable industry – for example, in the production of chemicals and new biomaterials, the conversion of biowaste to biofuels, and breaking down plastics and pollutants.