The University of Toronto has been awarded 34 new Canada Research Chairs and seven renewals, federal minister of science Kirsty Duncan announced February 9.

The researchers come from across the university, and are studying subjects on scales ranging from the microscopic to the galactic. U of T now has 255 Canada Research Chairs, the largest number of any university in the country.

A total of 305 new and renewed Canada Research Chairs were appointed at 53 postsecondary institutions across the country in the Feb. 9 announcement. Launched in 2000, the Canada Research Chair program is aimed at helping the country attract and retain research leaders in engineering and natural sciences, health sciences, humanities and social sciences. The program is a tri-agency initiative of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. 

“We are grateful to the government of Canada for this investment,” said Professor Vivek Goel, U of T’s vice-president, research and innovation. “The CRC program has enabled U of T to attract and retain the best researchers from around the world.”

Goel noted that the new research chairs come from a wide range of disciplines across the university. “From electoral law to metaphysics to population genomics to environmental engineering, the new CRCs show the breadth and depth of research at U of T.”

Duncan, a U of T graduate who has taught at the University of Toronto Scarborough and at Royal Roads University, congratulated the new research chairs. “The Government of Canada is proud to support these elite researchers who improve our depth of knowledge, strengthen Canada’s international competitiveness, and help train the next generation of our highly skilled workforce.”

Read more about the Canada Research Chair program

Laura Rosella, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, is one of the new U of T Canada Research Chairs. As the Canada Research Chair in Population Health Analytics, her research will generate new methods of addressing inequalities in chronic disease risk — for example, among ethnic minorities and those of low socioeconomic status — and it will inform prevention strategies for chronic diseases and high healthcare utilization.

“My program will develop new, practical tools to inform health system planning using large, linked databases of health, social, and cost-related information to examine how the health system is functioning, health inequities among Canadians, health system inefficiencies and priorities for action,” said Rosella.

U of T’s new chairholders are:

• David Andrews, Medicine/Sunnybrook Hospital – CRC in Membrane Biogenesis
• Jo Bovy, Arts & Science (Astronomy & Astrophysics) – CRC in Galactic Astrophysics
• Angela Cheung, Medicine/University Health Network (UHN) – CRC in Musculoskeletal and Postmenopausal Health
• Ya-Huei (Cathy) Chin, Chemical Engineering – CRC in Advanced Catalysis for Sustainable Chemistry 
• Myron Cybulsky, Medicine/UHN – CRC in Arterial Wall Biology and Atherogenesis
• Scott Davies, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) – CRC in Data, Equity and Policy in Education
• Yasmin Dawood, Law – CRC in Democracy, Constitutionalism, and Electoral Law
• Birsen Donmez, Mechanical & Industrial Engineering – CRC in Human Factors and Transportation
• Julie Forman-Kay, Medicine/Bio-chemistry/Hospital for Sick Children – CRC in Intrinsically Disordered Proteins
• Bryan Gaensler, Arts & Science/Dunlap Institute – CRC in Radio Astronomy
• Christian Hendershot, Medicine/Psychiatry/CAMH – CRC in Etiology and Treatment of Alcohol Use Disorders
• Kang Lee, OISE – Jackman Institute of Child Study – CRC in Moral Development and Developmental Neuroscience
• Loren Martin, University of Toronto Mississauga Psychology – CRC in Translational Pain Research
• Helen McNeill, Medicine/Molecular Genetics/ Mt. Sinai Hospital – CRC in Coordinating Growth and Polarity
• Alan Moses, Arts & Science/Cell & Systems Biology – CRC in Computational Biology
• Anthony Niblett, Law – CRC in Law, Economics and Innovation
• Aleksandar Nikolov, Arts & Science/Computer Science – CRC in Algorithms and Private Data Analysis
• Elodie Passeport, Civil Engineering – CRC in Environmental Engineering and Stable Isotopes
• Tarek Rajji, Medicine/Psychiatry/CAMH – CRC in Neurostimulation for Cognitive Disorders
• John Ratcliffe, UTM/Biology – CRC in Neuroethology
• Diego Restuccia, Arts & Science/Economics – CRC in Macroeconomics and Productivity
• Matthew Roorda, Civil Engineering – CRC in Freight Transportation and Logistics
• Laura Rosella, Dalla Lana School of Public Health – CRC in Population Health Analytics
• Sophie Rousseaux, Arts & Science/Chemistry – CRC in Organic Chemistry
• Ruslan Salakhutdinov, Arts & Science/Computer Science – CRC in Statistical Machine Learning 
• Daniel Schramek, Medicine/Molecular Genetics/Mt. Sinai Hospital – CRC in Functional Cancer Genomics
• Arjumand Siddiqi, Dalla Lana School of Public Health– CRC in Population Health Equity
• David Sinton, Mechanical & Industrial Engineering – CRC in Microfluidics and Energy
• Nicholas Stang, Arts & Science/Philosophy – CRC in Metaphysics and its History
• Raquel Urtasun, Arts & Science/Computer Science – CRC in Machine Learning and Computer Vision
• Aristotle Voineskos, Medicine/Psychiatry/CAMH – CRC in Neuroimaging of Schizophrenia 
• Donald Weaver, Medicine/UHN – CRC in Drug Design for Protein Misfolding Disorders
• Daniel Winer, Medicine/Laboratory Medicine & Pathobiology/UHN – CRC in Immunometabolism
• Stephen Wright, Arts & Science/ Ecology & Evolutionary Biology – CRC in Population Genomics

The following researchers had their chairs renewed:

• Robin Green, Medicine/Psychiatry/UHN – CRC in Traumatic Brain Injury - Cognitive Rehabilitation Neuroscience
• Kevin Kain, Medicine/UHN – CRC in Molecular Parasitology
• Andreas Mandelis, Mechanical & Industrial Engineering – CRC in Diffusion-Wave and Photoacoustic Sciences and Technologies
• Karim Mekhail, Medicine/Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology – CRC in Spatial Genome Organization
• Prasanth Nair, Institute for Aerospace Studies – CRC in Computational Modelling and Design Under Uncertainty
• Pamela Ohashi, Medicine/Medical Biophysics, UHN – CRC in Tumor Immunity and Immunotherapy
• Antonio Strafella, Medicine/UHN – CRC in Movement Disorders and Neuroimaging