Newsletter
PAPIER issues approximately two newsletters per year to members and interested parties. The most recent and earlier newsletters are found here.

Recent Activities

Following are the recipients of prizes from the PAPIER student poster and seminar sessions at the PAPTAC Annual Meeting in Montreal held in February, 2009:

Alkis Karnis Memorial Prize Winners 2009 (For best poster)
1st: Ali Soltanzadeh – University of British Columbia - Mixing Evaluation in Pulp Stock Chests
2nd: Ali Chami Khazraji – Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières - Physicochemical Study of Factors Inducing Piling in Heatset Offset Lithography
3rd: Antti Luukkonen – University of British Columbia - Understanding Low Consistency Refining of Mechanical Pulps

Henry I. Bolker Prize Winners 2009 (For best seminar)
1st: Zeinab Hosseinidoust – McGill University - Cellulose-phage Interactions
2nd: Azadeh Bagherzadeh-Namazi – University of Toronto - Conversion of Pulp Mill Sludge into Activated Carbon
3rd: Lijun Wang – University of Toronto - Characterization of Two Novel Esterases from Streptomyces avermitilis and Rhodopseudomonas palustris

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PAPIER is an outcome of the Mechanical Wood-Pulps Network of Centres of Excellence which took place over the period 1990-2002. Highlights from this Network are given in pdf format here. Since 2002, PAPIER has been involved in several major activities.

An early activity was providing administrative support  for the creation of SENTINEL, the Bioactive Paper Network. This $2.5M/yr NSERC network of researchers, headed by Prof Robert Pelton, consists of  28 professors at 11 universities carrying out research on novel uses of paper products having bioactive capabilities. For further information see www.bioactivepaper.ca

    In collaboration with Paprican, PAPIER formed a  Biorefinery Task Force  to initiate activities in biorefinery research. Outcomes of this collaboration were a jointly sponsored symposium at PAPTAC annual meeting and the initiation of the Canadian University Biorefinery Network (CUFBNet). Click here for the Biorefinery Network

At the request of the Canadian Forest Innovation Council, an agency of the Forest Products Association of Canada, PAPIER prepared two white papers on transformative technologies for the Canadian forest industry. These are; “Transformative Technologies for Pulp and Paper Products and Processes” by R.J. Kerekes and A.Garner, and “ Transformative Technologies for Biochemicals” by A.Garner and R.J. Kerekes. These reports may be found in the larger report issued by CFIC in pdf format here.

Prof Robert Pelton made a submission, endorsed by PAPIER directors, on “The Academic Role in Revitalizing the Canadian Forest Products Industry” to the Standing Committee on Natural Resources of the parliament of Canada. This submission is given in pdf format here.