One of the North America's top medical researchers is coming back to Canada after winning a $20 million research prize to set up shop in Alberta.

Ottawa-born Bruce McNaughton, 60, recently of the University of Arizona, will be based at the University of Lethbridge after receiving on Thursday one of three $20-million Polaris Awards, the richest health research award in Canada.

The awards, handed out by the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research, were established last year by the provincial government to lure three "super-star" medical researchers to the province.

The foundation offers three $10-million prizes to recruit researchers. The money is then to be matched by one of three host universities — Calgary, Alberta or Lethbridge — to create a $20-million prize to be paid out over 10 years.

Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach said the investment would pay dividends for both health and the economy.

"Alberta's bold investment in this top health researcher will benefit people with brain injuries, addictions and age-related brain disorders not only in our province, but around the world," he said in a statement.

McNaughton, who spent 26 years at Arizona and the University of Colorado before that, has focused his research on the mechanisms of memory and memory disorders associated with aging and brain damage.

His work had made it possible to record from several hundred neurons in the outer part of the brain during learning experiments in animals, providing new insights into how brain cells co-operate.

He will be based at Lethbridge's Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience, which was established in 2001 and has become one of the leading brain institutes in Canada.

"Every scientist dreams of this kind of opportunity," said McNaughton in a statement. "I am joining a team that is already known globally for its groundbreaking work in behavioural neuroscience. I want Albertans to know that this award allows us to attract some of the best young minds in neuroscience to tackle the complex problems of the brain."

The other two Polaris Awards are expected to be awarded this year, but no time frame for those announcements has been made.

McNaughton is the latest of a number of high-profile researchers that have come to Canada in the last year. Earlier this year the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics signed internationally renowned physicist Neil Turok to act as its director. And in August the Canadian Light Source at the University of Saskatchewan hired accomplished German physicist Josef Hormes to be its new executive director.