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Alice Wilson Award
- 2011 - May Chazan
- 2010 - Dawn M. Cooper
- 2009 - Iwona Rudkowska
- 2008 - Sarah L. Desmarais
- 2007 - Melanie Ann Huntley (NSERC)
- 2006 - Teresa Liu-Ambrose (CIHR)
- 2005 - Candice L. Odgers (SSHRC)
- 2004 - Miaki Ishii (NSERC)
- 2003 - M. Joan Saary (CIHR)
- 2002 - Indra K. McEwen (SSHRC)
- 2001 - Kathryn E. Preuss (NSERC)
- 2000 - Nancy N. Berg (MRC)
- 1999 - Kari S. Krogh (SSHRC)
- 1998 - Tamara Grand (NSERC)
- 1997 - Dorothy Reimer (MRC)
- 1996 - Katherine Osler Acheson (SSHRC)
- 1995 - Susan Kaminskyj (NSERC)
- 1994 - Elizabeth Lee Irving (MRC)
- 1993 - Victoria L. McGeer (SSHRC)
- 1992 - Susan M. Bradley (NSERC)
- 1991 - Monique Doré-Sirois (MRC)
Top of Page2011 - May Chazan
May Chazan received her Ph.D. in Geography from Carleton University in 2011 and has recently embarked on a post-doctoral fellowship, supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), at the University of Toronto. Research associate with the Health Economics and HIV/AIDS Research Division (HEARD) in South Africa, and 2006 Trudeau Foundation Scholar, Chazan's doctoral research examined the ways in which older women in certain South African communities were collectively responding to the combined stresses of HIV/AIDS, violence, and poverty, and their complex linkages into a growing Canadian movement of some 10,000 Canadian grandmothers. She is now significantly expanding this work to investigate, through a lens of critical feminist theory, other examples of how older women are mobilizing and forming transnational linkages in their struggles for social and environmental justice.
2010 - Dawn M. Cooper
Dr. Dawn Cooper is a molecular biologist interested in the evolution and regulation of the immune system. She is currently researching how dysregulation of cell death and other immune signaling pathways can impact wound healing and the development of fibrosis and chronic inflammatory diseases.
2009 - Iwona Rudkowska
Iwona Rudkowska is a registered dietician who currently holds a CIHR Bisby postdoctoral fellowship at Laval University. In 2008, she received a doctoral degree in human nutrition from McGill University. Her research investigates the use of functional foods for the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular diseases and obesity. She also has an interest in nutrigenomics, in particular to understand how genetic factors modify our response to foods and how nutrients alter the expression of genes. The goal of her research is to develop personalized nutrition interventions, based on genetic information, to decrease the risk of developing chronic diseases.
2008 - Sarah L. Desmarais
Sarah Desmarais’ work attacks the important problem of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), and especially the risks associated with it during pregnancy. Her research will have significant policy implications for a serious social and public health issue in Canada where an estimated 25% of the population experience IPV.
2007 - Melanie Ann Huntley (NSERC)
Melanie Huntley is a computational biologist who currently holds an NSERC post doctoral fellowship at Cornell. She works in the fascinating and very important area of genomics and sequence analysis. She has several papers in some of the top journals in her field.
Her discoveries and the resulting reconsideration of the protein-structure-function paradigm from her first three publications are a most significant contribution to research. These results brought attention to the abundance of repetitive sequence within proteins and helped redirect traditional protein structure thinking by uncovering a relationship between abundant structurally “disordered” regions within proteins and their possible functions in important classes of proteins.
The impact of this work is in many areas, especially in understanding the origin of neurodegenerative diseases.
2006 - Teresa Liu-Ambrose (CIHR)
Department of Kinesiology, University of British Columbia
Dr. Liu-Ambrose’s research focuses on falls, which are a major cause of morbidity and mortality among older people with cognitive impairment (CI). Dr. Liu-Ambrose aims to determine whether CI affects older adults' capacity to accurately predict their actual physical abilities and to examine the relative contribution of physiological function and cognitive function to movement planning and execution in those with CI.
2005 - Candice L. Odgers (SSHRC)
Dr. Candice Odgers, a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Psychology at Simon Fraser University (SFU), has been involved in cutting edge research related to the development of aggression and antisocial behavior among high risk adolescents. She is currently a co-investigator on a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) New Emerging Team focused on gender and aggression. Her current research focuses on refining the measurement of antisocial and aggressive behavior among girls and mapping trajectories of development within high-risk contexts; knowledge of which is vital for promoting the healthy development of vulnerable adolescents. Dr. Odgers has an impressive publication record at this stage in her career and has been recognized through a number of awards within both the US and Canada for her scholarship and teaching.
2004 - Miaki Ishii (NSERC)
Dr. Miaki Ishii, who now holds a joint appointment at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography as a Green Scholar and at the University of Toronto as a post-doctoral researcher, graduated from Harvard University and went on to build a spectacular career based on research on the large-scale structure of the Earth's interior. Dr. Ishii's work reveals that the mantle, especially at its base, contains significant chemical as well as temperature heterogeneities. Furthermore, her work puts forward strong evidence for a new layer at the centre of the Earth. Dr. Ishii's research contributions show extraordinary originality, remarkable excellence and unusual depth.
2003 - M. Joan Saary (CIHR)
Dr. M. Joan Saary, a postdoctoral scholar at IMS and the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto, plans to fill the gap between outcome measurement, stakeholder perspectives and delivery of quality health care for occupational diseases. Her strong academic and clinical training provide an excellent background for her research in the relatively new specialty of Occupational Medicine. Among the 15 articles and 13 abstracts she has already published was an “Editor’s Choice” feature article. She was selected by the Canadian Space Agency for training in aerospace medicine at NASA and received the highly competitive CFISU scholarship from CRESTech, the Centre for Research in Earth and Space Technology, to attend the International Space University in Germany.
2002 - Indra K. McEwen (SSHRC)
Indra Kagis McEwen, a postdoctoral scholar at the Study Centre of the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, has already gained international recognition for her book Socrates' Ancestor: An Essay on Architectural Beginnings, published by the MIT Press and now in its third printing. A second book, Vitruvius: Writing the Body of Architecture, is currently in publication at the MIT Press. Her research at the CCA Study Centre, on "The architecture of fortification and the mechanical body of the invisible modern state" seeks to demonstrate that the paradigm shift underlying both the birth of the new science and that of the modern state finds its architectural ground in the geometry of seventeenth century fortifications.
2001 - Kathryn E. Preuss (NSERC)
Kathryn E. Preuss is a young scientist involved in the study of molecular materials. She had carried out first class research activities since her undergraduate years. During her Ph.D. she gained knowledge of both inorganic and organic chemistry and has studied electronic and semiconductive properties of some charge transfer salts. Her current research is in the area of nanotechnology, by designing compounds that are the basis for a molecular-size construction set (a molecular Tinkertoy). As a talented student and researcher, as a dedicated teacher and as an involved community person, she is one of the most promising human beings of her generation. Formerly at the University of Waterloo, she is currently conducting her research at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
2000 - Nancy N. Berg (MRC)
Dr. Nancy N. Berg, Department of Biochemistry, University of Toronto, is part of a team investigating the machinery in cells that defends the body against foreign agents such as viruses and tumors. She is defining the character of the proteins that interact with cytotoxic T lymphocytes. These lymphocytes provide essential cellular immune responses. Understanding how these lymphocytes respond to foreign cells is a major challenge in protein chemistry. Dr. Berg combines doctoral training in Immunology from the University of Alberta with postdoctoral work in biochemistry at the University of Toronto to develop techniques that bridge disciplines. Her accomplishments include an extensive publication and presentation record as well as several awards. Her current research will aid in the development of immunotherapies for medical applications.
1999 - Kari S. Krogh (SSHRC)
Kari S. Krogh, Faculty of Human and Social Development, University of Victoria, is engaged in collaborative research related to the experience of disability. She is presently conducting an analysis of entrepreneurship options for people with disabilities. This research aims to deconstruct current definitions of entrepreneurial success, foster supportive community partnerships and elaborate upon best practices. A graduate of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, Dr. Krogh has contributed significantly to the fields of psychology, education and disability studies through her extensive publications, conference presentations, lectures, and workshops on a range of topics including literacy acquisition among students who are nonspeaking, socioemotional development in children with epilepsy, and the impact of assistive technological devices on the lives of adults with disabilities. She has taken a leadership role in examining the process of negotiating and supporting the eaningful participation of people with disabilities and their organizations in multi-sector community partnerships and collaborative research.
1998 - Tamara Grand (NSERC)
Tamara Grand is investigating how natural selection on individual behavior influences the distribution, abundance, and evolution of species, using fish as a model system. At Concordia University, she studied how cichlid fish defend their food. She expanded these concepts in her Ph.D. work at Simon Fraser University where she worked on the feeding behaviour of juvenile salmon. Here, she tested and refined a model developed to predict the distribution of competitors across habitats differing in resource ability. By adding predation, the model was extended to include the effects of taking risks. Tamara Grand, now at The University of British Columbia, extends her work to evolutionary phenomena to examine how competitive ability and vulnerability to predators influence speciation. She is using stickleback fish to examine how behavioural decisions promote divergence along environmental gradients of resource availability and predation risk. She has produced seven publications from her work as a student. Tamara Grand is actively involved in promoting science among young women through the Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology.
1997 - Dorothy Reimer (MRC)
Dorothy Reimer is a molecular geneticist whose current scientific interests are in the development of safe and effective DNA delivery systems for use in gene therapy of cancer. Dr. Reimer has had extensive training in genetics and biochemistry and has used biochemical techniques for the development of lipid-based gene carriers for use in the clinical treatment of melanoma. Her doctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. S. M. Singh at The University of Western Ontario concerned the expression of the enzyme catalase and its implication in human disease such as cancer, aging and atherosclerosis. In her postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Dr. M. B. Bally at the British Columbia Cancer Agency and The University of British Columbia, she was exploiting a non-viral approach for effective gene delivery using novel hydrophobic complexes between cationic lipids and DNA. Dr. Reimer has recently taken a research position as a Senior Genetics Scientist at GeneMedicine Inc., a U.S.-based pharmaceutical company involved in the development of non-viral gene delivery systems. Dr. Reimer is an internationally recognized expert in her field, and has authored or co-authored more than twenty-two publications and has made twenty-seven presentations to international forums of scientific professionals. She brings a unique and critical expertise to the field of genetic research.
1996 - Katherine Osler Acheson (SSHRC)
Katherine Osler Acheson is a specialist in Renaissance and seventeenth-century English literature whose published work includes a critical edition of the diary of Lady Anne Clifford, a seventeenth-century noblewoman. Her current research at Stanford University is a study of the evolution of the concept of authorial intention in seventeenth-century English drama, emphasizing its relation to discourses of gender, sexuality and the body. In contrast with existing views of the intentional author as a product of eighteenth-century ideology and material culture, her study locates the beginnings of the concept as early as the late sixteenth century, and traces its evolution through the great dramatic texts of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson to the late seventeenth-century works of Dryden, Aphra Behn and Margaret Cavendish. These shifting views of authorial intention are linked not only to the emergent genres of literary biography and author-centred criticism, but to legal and philosophical writings regarding the body as personal property, the will as inalienable, and, finally, the concept of artistic property which led to the introduction of copyright law.
1995 - Susan Kaminskyj (NSERC)
Susan Kaminskyj's main interest has been in fungal biology. The primary focus of her work may be expressed in the question, "How do fungal hyphae grow?" Beginning first in the laboratories of Dr. Michelle Heath (Toronto) and Dr. Brent Heath (York), Dr. Kaminskyj introduced a new dimension into the basic model of fungal cell growth. She described how tip growth requires coordination of apical wall deposition, hyphal tip extension and apex-directed cytoplasmic migration, as well as contact between the cytoskeleton and the cell wall. She is now extending her work to determine how the fungus senses the environment through communication between the cell wall, the plasma membrane and the cytoplasm. In her current work at Purdue University, Dr. Kaminskyj is developing molecular biology techniques to complement her work on hyphal growth. Her work on the role of integrins in the cell wall signalling process could be of crucial importance for the much-needed development of new drugs to control fungal infections.
1994 - Elizabeth Lee Irving (MRC)
Elisabeth Lee IRVING of the Eye Research Institute, University of Toronto, has demonstrated exceptional ability in connecting her fundamental research on the eye to clinical problems. Her maturity and independence, combined with an unusual breadth of research training and clinical experience, are evident in her original studies of the mechanisms controlling the development of the eye. In attacking the origins of problems such as myopia, astigmatism and other impairments of binocular vision, she has laid the foundations for a fruitful research career in infant visual development and related areas. An outstanding career as a student and her already substantial contributions to her field have been recognized previously by the Governor General's gold medal and other awards for creative research and scholarship while at the University of Waterloo.
1993 - Victoria L. McGeer (SSHRC)
In her graduate year, Victoria L. McGeer was awarded an impressive number of prestigious fellowships. Her doctoral dissertation was entitled "The Meaning of Living Languages", and her current research builds on this thesis. With a solid disciplinary base in philosophy, her postdoctoral award from SSHRC encourages further exploration of meaning as being essentially social, and she is now pursuing a multidisciplinary effort to develop a model of human cognitive processes. Her research program has been recognized as innovative and eminently promising. She has also been an active member and speaker of the Canadian Philosophical Association.
1992 - Susan M. Bradley (NSERC)
Susan Bradley is the 1992 recipient of the Alice Wilson Award given to a young female scientist at the beginning of her career. It has been awarded for her doctoral research on the synthesis and characterization of new types of porous, inorganic crystalline polymers. During her thesis work at The University of Calgary, she synthesized several new materials at high temperatures and pressures in aqueous solutions and characterized them using a variety of sophisticated techniques including X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and nuclear magnetic resonance. Her analysis concentrated on the nature of the pores produced, their thermal stability and the presence of active sites for catalytic reactions, with a view to defining potential industrial applications not only as catalysing agents but also as optical storage devices. Dr. Bradley is now pursuing postdoctoral studies at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.
1991 - Monique Doré-Sirois (MRC)
The Alice Wilson Award is given to a young woman scientist for achieving excellence and to recognize her commitment in research and scholarship at the beginning of her career. The award has been given for the first time this year to Monique Doré-Sirois, veterinarian and medical scientist, for her doctorate and further studies on the mechanisms and molecular functions of leucocytes and their importance in inflammatory reactions with animals.