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A University of New Brunswick (UNB) researcher has been awarded specialized equipment and infrastructure funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI). The funding, awarded through the CFI’s John R. Evans Leaders Fund (JELF), was announced as part of a national funding package on September 13, 2024.

Dr. Maryam Kebbe is an assistant professor of kinesiology who specializes in infant nutrition and metabolism. In her Perinatal-Pediatric Health & Development Studies laboratory, she explores the connections between nutrition such as human milk (also commonly called breastmilk), the infant gut microbiome and health issues like obesity.

Kebbe’s ultimate goal is to improve the health and well-being of people in their infancy and across their entire lives.

Studying infant nutrition understandably has its challenges, with participants involved who cannot speak or understand the processes. Kebbe’s $150,000 in CFI funding will go toward equipment including a PEA POD, which enables researchers to accurately estimate an infant’s body mass and the proportion of fat mass within it, without using water submersion or x-rays, techniques that, while safe, can worry the infants or their parents.

"Support from the CFI has allowed me to secure essential, state-of-the-art equipment for my research in maternal and child health,” said Kebbe. “I am incredibly grateful for this opportunity to advance our understanding and make a meaningful difference in improving perinatal and pediatric health outcomes."

Other equipment will include the first infant metabolic chamber in Canada (and second worldwide), used to measure an infant’s metabolic rate - how much energy they use over time, as well as a cycle ergometer, a human milk analyzer and cold-storage solutions for testing samples.

With no other PEA PODs in the Maritimes, and the only other infant metabolic chamber in Louisiana, this new infrastructure will make Kebbe’s lab unique in the province and in the country, enabling groundbreaking academic research as well as providing access for other groups requiring this testing capacity. Acquisition of this new equipment is also being supported by $200,000 from ResearchNB and $54,283 from UNB, as well as in-kind vendor support.

“Congratulations to Dr. Kebbe on this well-deserved support from the CFI,” said UNB vice president research Dr. David MaGee. “The acquisition of this unique research infrastructure will enable Dr. Kebbe to pursue her goals of improving human health across the lifespan, while also opening up new opportunities for other researchers, students and other organizations to make use of previously inaccessible capacity.”

The CFI’s JELF program helps institutions like UNB recruit and retain outstanding, talented researchers and to enable their success and innovation through the acquisition of critical tools and facilities.

“The infrastructure projects funded by the Government of Canada through the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s John R. Evans Leaders Fund support researchers who are pushing boundaries of knowledge while driving economic prosperity,” said Roseann O’Reilly Runte, CFI president and CEO.

“In the global race for talent, the CFI’s support helps institutions train, attract and retain these talented researchers and ensures all Canadians benefit from their innovations.”