Canada 150 Research Chairholders

Jennifer M. Welsh
McGill University | SSHRC

Canada 150 Research Chair in Global Governance and Security

This chair focuses on the changing character and regulation of armed conflicts—including the roles key institutions, such as the United Nations, national armed forces, nonstate armed groups, and humanitarian organizations, play. Using an interdisciplinary approach that combines political science, law and normative theory, Jennifer M. Welsh and her team will analyze the impacts of human rights norms, such as for criminal accountability and the responsibility to protect, in the causes and conduct of war. They will also analyze the likely trajectory of such norms in a new geopolitical context where liberal ideas are encountering backlash.

Award amount: $350,000 per year for seven years

Ian Manners
University of Victoria | NSERC

Canada 150 Research Chair in Materials Science

Creating tiny particles with dimensions of about 10 to 10,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair—with control over their shape, size and composition, and therefore their properties—is a major global challenge, with crucial significance for advancing many technologies. Ian Manners has pioneered a new way to do so by using simple polymer molecules, in controlled crystallization in a solution. This chair will develop and expand this approach, to enable both fundamental scientific advances and applications in areas such as displays, electronics and biomedicine.

Award amount: $1,000,000 per year for seven years

Josef Martin Penninger
The University of British Columbia | CIHR

Canada 150 Research Chair in Functional Genetics

Josef Martin Penninger’s basic approach is to genetically manipulate and change genes in mice, and to determine the effects these mutations have on development of the whole organism and in diseases. From these mutations, his team tries to establish basic principles of development, and basic mechanisms of disease pathogenesis. The University of British Columbia’s faculties of medicine and science consider Penninger the world leader in functional genetics research. His recruitment brings strength and eminence to the university, and furthers its efforts to attract top talent to its research community.

Award amount: $1,000,000 per year for seven years

Kerstin Dautenhahn
University of Waterloo | NSERC

Canada 150 Research Chair in Intelligent Robotics

Robots are increasingly being used outside of traditional manufacturing. Kerstin Dautenhahn is taking on one of the most challenging areas in robotics: developing robots that can interact with, and work naturally alongside, people to help them in their daily lives. Making robots that can behave socially and intelligently is a prerequisite for them to be accepted and, ultimately, used successfully wherever they would share spaces with people. New adaptive and interactive robotic technologies will impact several areas, including education, therapy and care for older residents. Dautenhahn’s research program will also integrate artificial intelligence to advance interdisciplinary approaches for creating intelligent and assistive robots.

Award amount: $350,000 per year for seven years

Miguel Ramalho-Santos
University of Toronto | CIHR

Canada 150 Research Chair in Developmental Epigenetics

Miguel Ramalho-Santos recognizes the enormous potential of research aimed at understanding how environmental cues influence early stages of fetal development. A world-recognized expert in this exciting field, he will create and employ new experimental approaches to assess how external events shape embryo development, and their long-term impacts for adult health. The chair’s findings hold promise for improving fertility treatments, pregnancy outcomes, and women and children’s health, in Canada and around the world. Ramalho-Santos’s research program bridges stem cell biology, mammal development and epigenetics in a way that is unparalleled in Canada.

Award amount: $350,000 per year for seven years

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun
Simon Fraser University | SSHRC

Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media

The Digital Democracies Group stemming from this chair will integrate humanities and data sciences research to address questions of equality and social justice. Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and her research team will fight the current spread of online “echo chambers” and discriminatory algorithms by creating “alternative data literacies” and “paradigms for connection.” Their work will range from developing applications and methods to transform hostile social media exchanges into productive dialogue, to critically analyzing “fake news” and its historical evolution. Working with Simon Frasier University’s many centres of excellence on big data, and engaging communities / civil society, the chair’s research will help build connections and lead to innovative approaches to digital democracy.

Award amount: $350,000 per year for seven years

Azim Shariff
The University of British Columbia | SSHRC

Canada 150 Research Chair in Moral Psychology

Azim Shariff and his team will research how people’s moral psychology—their feelings about right and wrong—shapes and is shaped by social institutions and group behaviours. One of the chair’s main goals is to advance a scientific approach to addressing longstanding questions about religion’s impacts on moral behavior. Shariff will also study how people’s moral psychology affects their attitudes about pressing issues, such as climate change, criminal punishment, income inequality, and emerging technologies like self-driving cars. By applying their expertise in moral psychology to these and other important societal concerns, the chair will enhance Canadian research landscape.

Award amount: $350,000 per year for seven years

Judith Elizabeth Mank
The University of British Columbia | NSERC

Canada 150 Research Chair in Evolutionary Genomics

Judith Elizabeth Mank studies the genetics and selective agents behind sexual dimorphism (differences between the sexes). Such differences are, arguably, the most pervasive form of what is called “intraspecific diversity” in the animal kingdom. In many animals, males and females differ from each other in a broad range of traits, including their morphology, physiology and behaviour. Mank’s cutting-edge research combines population genomic and transcriptomic approaches with functional genetics. The results could reveal the genetic causes behind, and the evolutionary consequences of, sexual dimorphism. To understand sex differences in how diseases occur, and in how patients respond to therapy, Mank and her team also work with biomedics to understand the genetics behind sexual dimorphism in practical, clinically relevant situations.

Award amount: $1,000,000 per year for seven years

Anita Tam Layton
University of Waterloo | NSERC

Canada 150 Research Chair in Mathematical Biology and Medicine

Anita Tam Layton is a pioneer in demonstrating the use of mathematics as the new microscope in biology and medicine. Her modelling work was instrumental in solving one of the longest-standing mysteries in traditional physiology: How do mammal kidneys produce urine that is much more concentrated than blood plasma? More recently, the chair has done groundbreaking translational work on the effectiveness of treatments for hypertension and diabetes. Tam Layton’s contributions to research have included revealing the molecular mechanisms behind different responses to treatments for hypertension among men and women; and uncovering potential side effects of a new “miracle drug” for diabetes.

Award amount: $350,000 per year for seven years

Donna Rose Addis
University of Toronto | CIHR

Canada 150 Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory and Aging

Donna Rose Addis says Canada urgently needs to transform the journey of aging by improving brain health and cognitive function. This chair joins the Rotman Research Institute and the University of Toronto, both internationally renowned for expertise in aging and cognition. The chair and the institutions are committed to preserving or enhancing memory in people who are aging, including those suffering from dementia and/or depression. Addis and her team’s research will expand Canada’s strength and expertise in aging and brain health. She will study the impact memory has on other cognitive functions, such as imagination and future thinking, the consequences memory declines have on a person’s sense of identity and well-being, and approaches to enhancing memory.

Award amount: $350,000 per year for seven years

Sari Michelle van Anders
Queen’s University | NSERC

Canada 150 Research Chair in Social Neuroendocrinology, Sexuality and Gender/Sex

Sari Michelle van Anders is a leader in feminist bioscience and sex research. Her award-winning research spans across natural, social and health sciences, to the arts and humanities. Having led innovation and established the new field of “social neuroendocrinology,” van Anders is asking new groundbreaking questions. For example, van Anders is researching how gendered experiences modulate testosterone, how testosterone responds when a person marginalizes others, and why certain sexual phenomena change a person’s hormones and immunity. With the creation of sexual configurations theory, van Anders’ work will next explore how the experiences of those from sexual and gender minorities and majorities can better be thought about and understood—in science, and in our lives.

Award amount: $350,000 per year for seven years

Julienne Christine Stroeve
University of Manitoba | NSERC

Canada 150 Research Chair in Climate Sea Ice Coupling

The world has turned its attention to the Arctic.  This is, in large part, because of how rapidly the sea ice that has covered much of the Arctic is shrinking. The resulting increase in the amount of open water is already having profound impacts on the Arctic’s energy and freshwater balance. Julienne Christine Stroeve and her team will use satellite and in situ data, Inuit traditional knowledge, community monitoring, and climate models to improve our understanding of how changes in sea ice contribute to the large-scale coupling of freshwater and the Arctic Ocean. Stroeve will also investigate how these changes, in turn, influence large-scale weather and ocean circulation patterns, polar ecosystems, marine biogeochemistry, the livelihoods of coastal communities, marine activity, and resource extraction.

Award amount: $1,000,000 per year for seven years

Borries Demeler
University of Lethbridge | NSERC

Canada 150 Research Chair in Biophysics

This chair will establish an international centre for hydrodynamics and solution-based biophysics at the University of Lethbridge. Borries Demeler and the centre will provide the Canadian and foreign research communities with cutting-edge instruments, experimental design, and data analysis for “analytical ultracentrifugation” (AUC) experiments, where macromolecules are analyzed while in a solution. The research team will establish new national and international research collaborations and build on the more than 25-year development of UltraScan, a biophysical analysis software used for water-based AUC experiments, small-angle X-ray and neutron scattering, hydrodynamic bead modelling, and the further worldwide expansion of the UltraScan LIMS infrastructure. Demeler and the centre will also train a next generation of biophysicists.

Award amount: $350,000 per year for seven years

Yves Vincent Brun
Université de Montréal | CIHR

Canada 150 Research Chair in Bacterial Cell Biology

The rapid increase in bacteria that are resistant to virtually all available antibiotics underscores the urgent need to develop new ones. Yves Vincent Brun will continue to study two of the best targets for developing new antibiotics: bacterial cell wall synthesis, and the adhesion of bacteria to surfaces. The chair will capitalize on his research team’s recent seminal discoveries, and the transformative tools recently developed in his lab. The team’s multidisciplinary collaboration in chemistry, biophysics, bioengineering, biophotonics, medicine and dentistry will uncover new targets for antibiotic development, and lead to “bioadhesives” that can be applied broadly.

Award amount: $1,000,000 per year for seven years

Margo Seltzer
The University of British Columbia | NSERC

Canada 150 Research Chair in Computer Systems

Computing has a role in virtually every aspect of human lives. The computer systems field is one of the central pillars of computer science. Canada’s research strength in computer systems is growing, and fills a prominent and critical role in both academia and industry sectors.  Margo Seltzer, a leading researcher in the field, focuses her work on operating systems, file systems, transaction systems, data provenance, graph analytic engines, databases, and health-care informatics. The chair’s research also dovetails well with artificial intelligence and data science. Her team’s research will contribute substantially to building Canada's research capacity across all of these areas.

Award amount: $1,000,000 per year for seven years

Caroline Colijn
Simon Fraser University | NSERC

Canada 150 Research Chair in Mathematics for Infection, Evolution and Public Health

Caroline Colijn’s research is at the intersection of data science, mathematical modelling and public health. Colijn and her team build the quantitative tools to fill the gap between the kind of data we can collect about infections, and our ability to use those data for public health. For example, Colijn created a method for using DNA sequences from infections to understand how an outbreak is spreading, and to stop outbreaks more easily. The chair’s work is built on new mathematical structures and models, and on new ways to summarize and compare complex data about evolution and diversity.

Award amount: $350,000 per year for seven years

Alán Aspuru-Guzik
University of Toronto | NSERC

Canada 150 Research Chair in Theoretical and Quantum Chemistry

There is currently nothing in Canada in the same research space as Alán Aspuru-Guzik’s computational chemistry research program. Indeed, as the leading figure in the world in this area, he will immediately establish Canada as a cutting-edge centre for research in this important topic. His chair’s presence at the University of Toronto will serve as a multidisciplinary beacon for Canadian and international graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and researchers to join his research program. Aspuru-Guzik and his team will set the standard—and the agenda—for this major research theme across the country for years to come.

Award amount: $1,000,000 per year for seven years

Jonathan L. Sievers
McGill University | NSERC

Canada 150 Research Chair in Theoretical and Observational Cosmology

Jonathan L. Sievers is active in researching a number of the most pressing problems in cosmology. His emphasis is on using high-performance computing to get as much information as possible out of observational data. His research focus has been on analyzing cosmic microwave background data, theory and observations of galaxy clusters. The chair’s current research is central to modern cosmology, including the “epoch of re-ionization,” intensity-mapping using neutral hydrogen and searching for fast radio bursts. Sievers is also principal investigator for two 21-centimetre neutral hydrogen experiments.

Award amount: $1,000,000 per year for seven years

Shireen Hassim
Carleton University | SSHRC

Canada 150 Research Chair in Gender and African Politics

As Chair, Shireen Hassim will advance research at Carleton University on gender and on Africa. Based at the university’s Institute of African Studies, she will convene collaborative projects that apply an interdisciplinary lens in studying areas such as governance and governmentality, and ways gender and sexualities are constituted in Africa. Research projects launched through the institute will also facilitate new ways of thinking about links between north and south in late capitalism, and will set out to disrupt conventional geographical boundaries in scholarship. Under the chair, the postgraduate teaching program at the institute will be strengthened, and extended to the doctoral level, and will build research, fieldwork and institutional links with southern Africa.

Award amount: $350,000 per year for seven years

Deb Verhoeven
University of Alberta | SSHRC

Canada 150 Research Chair in Gender and Cultural Informatics

Deb Verhoeven’s research reveals how the informational relationships between cultural objects in collected records matter more than the objects themselves. The chair and her research team perform feminist, intersectional analyses of the databases and digital archives that are increasingly central to humanities and social science. Verhoeven’s work shows that the arcane information systems that have defined the relationships between cultural objects have reproduced privileged social priorities—obscuring the lived and imaginative experiences of marginal communities. Verhoeven and her team will use machine learning and crowdsourcing to create an open-linked, open data knowledge base of feminist content sourced from a wide range of Canadian cultural collections. Their work will establish a “pro-ethical” approach to structuring digital humanities data.

Award amount: $350,000 per year for seven years

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