Prof. Pierre Blanchet Receives NSERC Synergy Award for Innovation

After nearly 10 years at the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Industrial Research Chair in Sustainable Wood Construction (CIRCERB), Professor Pierre Blanchet of Laval University received the Synergy Award for Innovation on Tuesday, October 25.

This important distinction was awarded to him during a ceremony at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. According to ULaval Nouvelles the award honours the most effective and successful research partnerships between higher education institutions and public or private organizations:

“I am very happy to receive this award, I feel a great sense of satisfaction. Managing a partnership like mine is quite demanding. There has always been a desire within the Partnership to have representatives from the value chain, from the design of bio-based materials to the operation of buildings. We have architects, consulting engineering firms, environmental certification people, material and service providers,” says Prof. Blanchet.

The Chair is dedicated to reducing the environmental footprint of commercial, public, industrial and multi-story residential construction.

Aware of the challenge of his approach, which aims to take into account all aspects of the industry, the professor has surrounded himself with a network of professors, industrial partners and international collaborators.

“Every building is unique. You can’t say, ‘I’m going to reuse the solution I took from Building A and put it in Building B.’ B is not a carbon copy of A. It may not be that this solution performs at the same level.”

According to ULaval News, Pierre Blanchet is “considered to be a driving force behind innovations in the Canadian wood construction industry.”

Among the projects developed by the Chair is the creation of a “non-toxic process for protecting wood in outdoor conditions and the development of biosourced building envelope materials using, among other things, cellulose nanofilaments.”

Professor Blanchet also participated in the development of the Quebec Wood Chart.