Fonds de recherche du Québec – The Grands Sages
Client: Fonds de recherche du Québec
Branding
B2B
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Gov./Asso.
The Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ), whose mandate is to support and promote research excellence and the training of the next generation of researchers, annually award prizes to emerging researchers, as well as established researchers and research professionals, to recognize the excellence of their work.
Through the Chief Scientist of Québec, Rémi Quirion, the FRQ commissioned the communication agency Macadam to create a new visual identity and testimonial videos for a new award category: the Grands Sages Awards. Three awards, one for each major research sector, are presented in the form of an additional $10,000 scholarship per year for four years, to three doctoral scholarship recipients whose applications, related to the field of expertise of each of the Grands Sages, ranked among the best in the recent competitions.
Professor Brenda Milner is considered one of the pioneers of cognitive neuropsychology, particularly for her work on the role of the brain’s temporal lobe in episodic memory mechanisms. Born in England, she moved to Montreal in 1944. With a PhD in psychophysiology from McGill University, she worked for 60 years at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital – The Neuro – and at McGill. She notably led the Neuropsychology Research Laboratory and taught in the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery. She has received numerous awards and distinctions, including the Québec Wilder-Penfield Prize in 1993, the Gairdner Award in 2005, and the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience in 2014.
Professor Serge Payette taught in the Department of Biology at Université Laval and is a pioneer in research on Quebec’s northern environment. For 40 years, he studied the effects of climate change on Arctic and subarctic ecosystems in Quebec. In 2011, he was awarded the Marie-Victorin Québec Prize. That same year, he became the first recipient of the Weston Family Prize, the most prestigious award given to a natural sciences researcher active in northern research. In 2013, Radio-Canada named Serge Payette Scientist of the Year following the publication of his extensive five-volume work, Flore nordique du Québec et du Labrador.
Professor Guy Rocher has served as a professor and researcher at both Université Laval and Université de Montréal. A prolific author, he notably wrote Introduction à la sociologie générale, a landmark book in 20th-century sociology. Throughout his career, he chaired numerous study committees and academic organizations. He was also a member of the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Education in Quebec (the Parent Commission), which led to the creation of the Ministry of Education. Rocher has received many accolades, including the Léon-Gérin Québec Prize in 1995, the Marcel-Vincent Prize from Acfas in 1989, and the Pierre-Chauveau Medal from the Royal Society of Canada in 1991. He is featured among the personalities in the Petit Larousse, which attributes to him ‘a decisive role in Quebec’s linguistic, cultural, and scientific policy.
