Research Centres and Institutes

Wilfrid Laurier University and the Government of the Northwest Territories signed a 10-year (2010-2020) partnership agreement in May 2010. The partnership has now been extended to 2030.

The purpose of the Government of the Northwest Territories-Wilfrid Laurier University (GNWT-WLU) Partnership is to provide new infrastructure and expertise to the GNWT for environmental research and education in order to expand the Territories’ capacity to conduct environmental research and monitoring, and to train the new expertise needed to manage its natural resources for future generations in face of emerging challenges from climate change and the impacts of growth and development.

The GNWT-Laurier Partnership is a step that will help ensure that the water of the NWT “remains clean, abundant and productive for all time”, as called for by the NWT Water Stewardship Strategy.

At Laurier, the partnership is headquartered at the Centre for Cold Regions and Water Science.

The Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems addresses interconnected environmental, social and economic challenges facing the global food system. Food systems are an effective lens for understanding and acting on some of the most pressing issues facing communities, including growing global food insecurity.

Food can act as a vehicle for change. School snack programs that purchase fruit directly from local producers who use low impact farming methods make the connections between human, community, economic and ecological well being more explicit. Through food, citizens, practitioners, policy-makers and academics can experience and understand the importance of ecological stewardship, social justice, prosperous economies, participatory democracy and food security.

The centre brings together researchers studying these issues from across Laurier including Geography and Environmental Studies, Psychology, Biology, Global Studies, Religion and Culture as well as the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics. 

The Laurier Institute for Water Science (LIWS) is a multi-disciplinary, collaborative undertaking among research faculty in the Faculty of Arts, the School of Business and Economics, and the Faculty of Science. 

The focus of the institute is on research in three interconnected water-related disciplines:

• Hydrological Sciences
• Ecology and Biogeochemistry
• Public Policy and Management

The LIWS is based at the Centre for Cold Regions and Water Science.

The Interdisciplinary Research Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Modelling in Scientific Discovery, Innovation and Sustainability (MS2Discovery) strives to create a dynamic and engaging environment that is highly conducive to interdisciplinary research, collaboration, and communication. Having a broad and pervasive involvement in both research and education, the Institute is active in its promotion of synergetic developments involving mathematical and statistical modelling by stimulating exciting new research and projects via important interdisciplinary problems motivated by other disciplines, industry, public policies and developments in society. The Institute devotes its efforts to interdisciplinary projects that support three main pillars:

• fundamental and applied research in sciences
• innovative technologies in industry and business, economics and finance
• the development and applications of mathematical and statistical modelling to global issues of sustainability

It serves as a platform for enhancing the research experience of faculty, students, post-doctoral fellows, and visiting scholars and for increasing the social awareness of the key role played by mathematical and statistical modelling in our society.