York researchers receive Killam Research Fellowships

by Susan Scott

Lorraine Code; Barry Lever

A York chemistry professor has received a prestigious Killam Research Fellowship and a York philosophy professor has had her Killam Research Fellowship renewed for the second of two years.

A.B. (Barry) P. Lever, a distinguished research professor who is also a chemistry professor received his fellowship for a research project titled "Molecular Computation: Electrochemical Parameter Theory and Electronic Coupling in Binuclear Complexes; Towards Molecular Devices." This project builds upon a theory called electrochemical parameter theory that Lever introduced in 1991. This theory, originally stated, allowed one to predict the properties of molecules - containing a single metal atom - regarding their ability to add or lose electrons, their so-called electrochemical behaviour.

Lever, who has been at York since 1967, says a major thrust in 21st century chemistry, electronics and computer science, is the development of computers which will be based on arrays of molecules rather than silicon chips. They will be faster and smaller than conventional computers. Their development relies on the ability to convey information - probably by moving electrons - along arrays of molecules linked by so-called molecular wires.

He says his project will extend the original theory to deal with arrays of molecules rather than individual molecules. This will involve synthesizing small multi-metallic arrays, investigating the ability to move electrons, and information, through them, and to modify the initial theory to make it predictive regarding these arrays of molecules. The result should be strategic design of new and more complex multi-metallic arrays. Such research may play a role in the ultimate development of molecular computers.

Last year, Lorraine Code, distinguished research professor and also a philosophy professor at York, received a Killam Research Fellowship for her project, a book, titled "Responsible Knowing, Ecological Imagining, and Politics of Epistemic Location." This year, her fellowship was renewed for a second year. She has taught at the University since 1977.

Her book develops the potential of ecological thinking as a conceptual apparatus and regulative principle for a theory of knowledge - an epistemology - capable of addressing feminist, multicultural and other post-colonial issues.

Code's goal is to create an ecologically-modelled theory that will interrogate the instrumental rationality, abstract individualism, reductivism and the exploitation of people and places, to generate a reconfigured approach to theory of knowledge, sensitive to both local and global diversity.

The Killam Fellowships are among Canada's most distinguished research awards, administered by the Canada Council for the Arts. They allow researchers to devote up to two years to full-time research. The fellowships are made possible in a bequest by Dorothy J. Killam made before her death in 1965. The awards support scholars working on projects of outstanding merit in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, health sciences, engineering and interdisciplinary studies within these fields.