In early 1988 St.Francis Xavier University decided to set up an industrially-oriented Laboratory to carry out research and development for local Dairy companies on projects of interest to them but for which either (a) they did not have the expertise to carry out, or (b) they did not want to incur the expense of setting up specialized facilities for one project.
In collaboration with members of the Nutrition Department, I designed the proposal, with the University agreeing to pay for the physical construction of the laboratory, the overheads and a part of the salaries. The proposal was for support for two years with partial support in the third year. At the suggestion of the then-President of StFXU, Dr. G. MacKinnon, the proposal was submitted to the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) in mid-1988. In October 1988 they funded all that had been requested.
In 1992-1993 I negotiated an enhancement of this Laboratory with ACOA in order to extend the Laboratories activities to work on Seafood Products. This arose out of work done for the NS Department of Fisheries.
The Laboratory received substantial funds to purchase equipment and hire a technician to work on developing spectroscopic techniques to characterize seafood and product development with local seafood companies.
The Laboratory is now involved in projects with the Enterprise Development Centre StFXU (XEDC), the Extension Dept. StFXU and the Private Sector which are intended to result in improved socio-economic conditions in Northeastern Nova Scotia. The Food Research Laboratory is also part of an Aquatic Resources research proposal of StFXU





Since October 1995, Dr. A. Georgallas [Postdoctoral Fellow with me 1979-82 and, since 1995, Associate Professor in the Physics/Mathematics Dept., Nova Scotia Agricultural College, Truro] and I have collaborated on a program to model Agricultural Systems. We are working on two projects involving Experimental Studies and Computer Simulation of Foraging Animals.
Although much work has been done on foraging, the use of computer simulation in modelling animal foraging appears to be essentially non-existent. We have obtained results that shows the development of phenomena in homogeneous landscapes, that were thought, according to one member of the group, could only come about through the presence of an inhomogeneous landscape.
The modelling work is being done in parallel with our analysis of experimental data taken at NSAC. I am using powerful techniques, developed for studying the Physics of Condensed Matter, to analyse these data.

Curriculum Vitae

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