New Canada Research Chairs
Five Faculty of Medicine researchers in molecular genetics, immunology and medical biophysics, have been awarded new Canada Research Chairs.
In an announcement made at the C. David Naylor Student Commons in the Medical Science Building, Kirsty Duncan, the federal science minister, revealed the university will be home to 21 new and renewed chairs as a result of the program’s most recent competition.
The total value of the funding associated with the U of T chairs is $19 million.
“It’s a source of great pride that the University of Toronto boasts so many great researchers who lead on discoveries that range from the microscopic to the galactic,” said Duncan, who was formerly a U of T researcher herself in health studies.
Created two decades ago, the Canada Research Chairs program is the centrepiece of the federal government’s strategy to make Canada a leader in research and development. The program seeks to attract and retain researchers in engineering and the natural sciences, health sciences, humanities and social sciences.
U of T holds the largest allocation of research chairs in the country, with some 275 chairs awarded to the university and its partner hospitals. Of the 21 new and renewed chairs awarded to U of T, half went to women and nearly 60 per cent supported emerging researchers.
Duncan thanked U of T and other post-secondary institutions for taking meaningful steps to boost the numbers of underrepresented groups in the federal program, citing numbers from the most recent competition.
“U of T supports this initiative wholeheartedly,” said U of T President Meric Gertler, adding the university is implementing the recommendations of an equity, diversity and inclusion working group that was struck last year to evaluate U of T’s research apparatus.
“We hold these principles as central to our public mission and our commitment to academic excellence.”
Duncan also used today’s U of T event to announce a plan to invest $210 million over the next five years to add 285 additional chairs to the federal program. That includes an additional supplement of up to $20,000 per chair to assist researchers who are in the early stages of their careers.
“The research is really for the benefit of Canadians and the training opportunities it provides for students,” said Vivek Goel,U of T’s vice-president of research and innovation. “In less than two decades, the Canada Research Chairs program has transformed research in this country.”
Rama Khokha’s research certainly qualifies as work that could benefit Canadians. A professor in the Department of Medical Biophysics and a senior scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Khokha said her Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Adult Tissue Stem Cell Niches will be used to “fuel new ideas, especially around the prevention of breast cancer and how to create novel therapies for women with breast cancer.”
Brian Ciruna, a professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics and a researcher at the Hospital for Sick Children, was named Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Developmental Genetics and Disease Modelling. Ciruna’s work on zebrafish helps to elucidate how abnormal cell polarity contributes to various diseases and the spread of cancer.
CRISPR researcher Alan Davidson, was named Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Bacteriophage-Based Technologies. Davidson is also a Molecular Genetics professor studying viruses that infect bacteria.
Dana Philpott, a professor in the Department of Immunology was named Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Microbe-host Interactions in Intestinal Homeostasis. Philpott studies proteins involved in adaptive immunity in bacterial infection and auto-immune disease.
And another Molecular Genetics professor, Mei Zhen, studies the nervous system in worms to address the underlying cellular mechanisms of human disorder in neural development.Zhen, also a senior investigator at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, was named a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Neural Circuit Development and Function.
As well, four Faculty of Medicine professors had their chairs renewed: Richard Bazinet (Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Brain Lipid Metabolism); Daniel Durocher (Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Molecular Genetics of the DNA Damage Response); Jason Fish (Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Vascular Cell and Molecular Biology); and Rosemary Martino (Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Swallowing Disorders).
In total, the federal government invested $156 million in 187 new and renewed research chairs through its most recent competition. They were awarded to 49 institutions across the country.
