Jane Stirling

Professor Ulrich Krull appointed vice-president, University of Toronto, and principal, U of T Mississauga

lanthierj — Tue, 27 Jun 2017 21:27:20 +0000

Professor Ulrich Krull appointed vice-president, University of Toronto, and principal, U of T Mississauga

lanthierj Tue, 06/27/2017 - 17:27

Jane Stirling

Author legacy

Jane Stirling

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Our Community

U of T Mississauga

UTM

Professor Ulrich Krull, currently serving as interim vice-president and principal, has been appointed the new vice-president & principal of the University of Toronto Mississauga, U of T announced today.

The appointment, a three-year term, begins July 1, 2017.

“I am absolutely delighted by the appointment of Professor Ulrich Krull as vice-president and principal, University of Toronto Mississauga,” said Meric Gertler, president of the University of Toronto. “In addition to his record as a distinguished scientist and celebrated teacher, he is also a gifted administrator who is building on UTM’s accomplishments in preparation for its next 50 years of success. At the same time he is continuing UTM’s very effective partnership with the City of Mississauga, helping to foster innovation and long-term prosperity in the region and well beyond. Professor Krull is a tremendous asset to UTM and to U of T, and I look forward to our continued collaboration in this next phase of his leadership.”

Krull has been serving as interim vice-president and principal since Sept. 1, 2016. In an appointment notice to the U of T community, Gertler and Provost Cheryl Regehr note that Krull has “demonstrated his deep passion for and commitment to the UTM campus” over the past year. “His visionary, strategic and innovative thinking has inspired the UTM community and are the precise qualities that make him exceptionally well suited to lead UTM over the next several years.”

“This is an exciting time at UTM, given the visioning and strategic planning process that will shape our destiny,” said Krull. “There is momentum and enthusiasm in all quarters to explore new areas of academic growth and research excellence. But we need to be quite deliberate in our decision-making – choosing smart, strategic directions so our growth both supports and helps lead U of T’s global mission.

“For the present, smart growth at UTM means suspending undergraduate enrolment increases while continuing to hire additional faculty and staff. It means investing in space that will support outstanding research opportunities and internationally recognized scholarship. And it means building robust links between academic programs and hands-on research so we enrich the academic experience for our students.

“Over the past number of years, UTM has invested wisely in supporting our established colleagues, hiring remarkable faculty and staff, and building award-winning facilities,” Krull noted. “We are now ready to embark on our next stage. And we will do so with our extraordinarily committed community of faculty, staff, students and senior executive team, engaged alumni and supportive community members in the City of Mississauga and Region of Peel. Working together, we will support excellence, encourage creativity and innovation, and explore new directions. I feel truly privileged to serve as principal of UTM and vice-president of U of T at such a pivotal time in our history.”

Before assuming the role of interim vice-president and principal, Krull served as vice-principal, special initiatives at UTM. In 2015, he served for six months as acting vice-president and principal during his predecessor’s administrative leave. Over his career, he served in a number of academic administrative roles at UTM: associate dean of sciences (1994-99); vice-dean, graduate (2006-08); and vice-principal, research (2003-13).

In addition to demonstrating a long-standing commitment to university service, Krull is also an active member of the community, both locally and internationally. Past leadership roles include chair of the Healthy City Stewardship Centre and vice-chair of Advantage Mississauga. He continues to serve on the Scientific Advisory Board for the Europtrode Conference series, the Board of Directors of the Research Innovation Commercialization Centre, and as a member of the Mississauga Innovation and Entrepreneurship Committee at the invitation of Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie.

Past awards and honours have included the Faculty Teaching Excellence Award at UTM, the Paul W. Fox Alumni Award at UTM, the University of Toronto Faculty Award, the Life Sciences Ontario Community Service Award, the inaugural Outstanding Contributor Award from U of T’s School of Continuing Studies, and the McBryde Medal and the Maxxam Lecture Award from the Canadian Society of Chemistry.

A professor of analytical chemistry, Krull holds the AstraZeneca Chair in Biotechnology, and is recognized as one of the leading analytical chemists in Canada. His scholarship focuses on bioanalytical research and the development of molecular diagnostics technologies for biomedical and environmental applications. He received his PhD from U of T in 1983, and has over 200 refereed publications and eight patents.

New medicinal chemistry centre will target cancer cells

lavende4 — Mon, 19 Sep 2016 14:14:57 +0000

New medicinal chemistry centre will target cancer cells

lavende4 Mon, 09/19/2016 - 10:14

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Patrick Gunning will be one of the principal investigators at the new UTM Centre for Medicinal Chemistry (Photo by Jacklyn Atlas)

Jane Stirling

Author legacy

Jane Stirling

Topic

Our Community

UTM

University of Toronto Mississauga

Cancer

medicinal chemistry

Stem Cells

The University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM) is establishing a new interdisciplinary centre for the development of new drugs targeting cancer and other diseases, thanks to a $7-million donation from Mississauga-based Orlando Corporation.

The focus of the new Centre for Medicinal Chemistry will be to create compounds that are purpose-built to interrupt specific biochemical processes while avoiding harm to normal cellular functions. Researchers at the centre will include Patrick Gunning of UTM’s Department of Chemical & Physical Sciences and four new principal investigators who will partner in medicinal chemistry, computational chemistry, cancer biology and stem cell biology.

“On behalf of the entire U of T community, I would like to thank Orlando Corporation for this extraordinary gift,” said U of T President Meric Gertler. “It will add more new talent to the brilliant team led by Professor Gunning, propelling them towards breakthrough innovations with the potential to save countless lives.”

“The Centre for Medicinal Chemistry will play a transformative role on this campus and well beyond our borders,” added Ulrich Krull, interim vice-president and principal of U of T Mississauga. “It will become a research hub of leading Canadian scientists dedicated to developing innovative approaches in the fight against cancer and other diseases. And it will position UTM as a key player in the life sciences sector on an international scale.”

“The research being conducted by Patrick and the Gunning Group has been truly groundbreaking over the past few years,”agreed Vivek Goel, U of T’s vice-president, research and innovation. “The creation of this centre is the logical next step that will help to bring cancer drugs to patients more quickly and efficiently.”

In just the past five years, Gunning and his team have moved four lead compounds to advanced pre-clinical trials. The great promise of this research is to dramatically reduce the time and cost of developing lead compounds, resulting in a much larger pipeline of molecules to fight many forms of cancer as well as other diseases.

“I am profoundly grateful to Orlando Corporation for this incredibly generous investment,” Gunning said. “Through this gift, we have a unique opportunity to dramatically scale the work that has already taken place in our efforts to develop life-saving drugs, and in doing so, also train a cohort of highly-skilled talent in the life sciences.”

“UTM injects over $1.3 billion annually into Peel region, with the bulk of the share going to Mississauga,” Mayor Bonnie Crombie of Mississauga says. “UTM’s rapid growth is proof that Mississauga Council’s unprecedented 10-year-$10-million grant to build the Innovation Complex is working. With plans for the Centre for Medicinal Chemistry, this campus continues to assert its own identity and reputation for research excellence.”

“Orlando Corporation has had a long history of supporting healthcare in the Greater Toronto area and specifically Mississauga,” says Phil King, Orlando’s president. “We are delighted to contribute to the establishment of the Centre for Medicinal Chemistry. The impressive record of the Gunning lab in early research trials promises great things for the future of cancer research. We are pleased to support a centre that will have such a significant impact on the health of so many people around the world.”

Canada Research Chairs: government backs leading scholars in mental health, human rights and more

sgupta — Fri, 10 Apr 2015 11:10:27 +0000

Canada Research Chairs: government backs leading scholars in mental health, human rights and more sgupta Fri, 04/10/2015 - 07:10

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CRC Julie Lefebvre, CRC Leonardo Salmena

Jane Stirling

Jenny Hall

Nicole Bodnar

Author legacy

Jenny Hall, Jane Stirling and Nicole Bodnar

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Engineering

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Chemistry

Research

Subheadline

Minister of State for Science and Technology visits UTM to award 11 new, eight renewed chairs

University of Toronto researchers made a grand showing April 9 in the federal government’s announcement of $139 million for the Canada Research Chairs (CRC) program, $17.6 million of which will go to 11 new and eight renewed chairs at U of T.

Ed Holder, Canada’s Minister of State for Science and Technology, visited the University of Toronto Mississauga campus to make the announcement. “Through our government’s updated science, technology and innovation strategy, we are making the record investments necessary to push the boundaries of knowledge, create jobs and opportunities, and improve the quality of life of Canadians,” he said.

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. Leonardo Salmena of U of T's department of pharmacology and toxicology and holder of the new CRC in Signal Transduction and Gene Regulation in Cancer, spoke on behalf of the chairholders.

“The Canada Research Chairs program will allow my team to build an infrastructure to conduct excellent science,” Salmena said. “More importantly, it will allow me to have a hand in training Canada’s future researchers.”

Salmena is researching the molecular basis of acute myeloid leukemia, a cancer originating in bone marrow. Through his role as a chairholder, he hopes his research can be used to develop new strategies for preventing and treating this form of cancer.

“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 universities across Canada, U of T among them, to attract and retain the best researchers from around the world. As such, the program is critical to the long-term prosperity of our nation.”

The diverse array of researchers backed by the program includes such leaders as Lisa Forman of U of T's Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the University of Toronto Mississauga's Joel Levine.

Levine studies the social interaction of fruit flies (hear Levine in a People Behind the Science podcast with Marie McNeely) in a bid to understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms that underlie innate patterns of social interaction. (Read more about Levine.) Forman, a leading international human rights law scholar, is leveraging her Canada Research Chair to advance health as a human right for all as an integral component of responses to global health equity.

“The right to health is a fundamental human right recognized in international law that can help political and health leaders to better address global health inequities,” said Forman, Lupina Assistant Professor in Global Health and Human Rights.

Supported by CRC funding, Forman’s research seeks to strengthen the international legal framework on the right to health to better respond to global health inequity in a number of ways.

“For example, there’s a loophole in the right to health argument that permits states to deny health care on the basis of limited resources, including for the poorest and most vulnerable populations,” said Forman, who is also director of the Comparative Program on Health and Society, a health fellowship program funded by the Lupina Foundation, which supports graduate research across U of T on the social determinants of health.

International lawyers have tried to fix this loophole by developing the idea of “minimum core obligations” to meet essential health needs that cannot be denied under any circumstances, said Forman. But she added the definition of minimum core obligations does not specify the health needs it covers and fails to specify the obligations of wealthier countries to assist poor countries to meet core obligations.

“These gaps in the definition limit the ability of the right to health to protect people's health against government inaction and cuts in international health funding. My research proposes to fill this gap by analyzing how courts and scholars around the world have interpreted this concept, and using this analysis to reconceptualise how we define and implement minimum core obligations.”

(Read more about Forman's work.)

U of T’s new chairholders are:

Timothy Chan, department of mechanical and industrial engineering — CRC in Novel Optimization and Analytics in Health
Lisa Forman, Dalla Lana School of Public Health — CRC in Human Rights and Global Health Equity
Teodor Grantcharov, department of surgery and St. Michael’s Hospital — CRC in Simulation and Surgical Safety
Monica Justice, department of molecular genetics and the Hospital for Sick Children — CRC in Mammalian Molecular Genetics
Larissa Katz, Faculty of Law — CRC in Private Law Theory
Julie Lefebvre, department of molecular genetics and Hospital for Sick Children — CRC in Developing Neural Circuitries
Joel Levine, department of biology, U of T Mississauga — CRC in Neurogenetics
Jeffrey Meyer, department of psychiatry and Centre for Addiction and Mental Health — CRC in Neurochemistry of Major Depression
Elizabeth Page-Gould, department of psychology — CRC in Social Psychophysiology
Catherine Sabiston, Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education — CRC in Physical Activity and Mental Health
Leonardo Salmena, department of pharmacology and toxicology, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre (University Health Network) — CRC in Signal Transduction and Gene Regulation in Cancer

In addition to funding the new chairs, eight chairs were renewed:

Patricia Brubaker, department of physiology — CRC in Vascular and Metabolic Biology
George Elliott, department of mathematics — CRC in Mathematics
Sajeev John, department of physics — CRC in Optical Sciences
Tony Lam, department of physiology and University Health Network — CRC in Obesity
Andras Nagy, department of molecular genetics and Mount Sinai Hospital — CRC in Stem Cells and Regeneration
Geoffrey Ozin, department of chemistry — CRC in Materials Chemistry and Nanochemistry
Nicholas Rule, department of psychology — CRC in Social Perception and Cognition
Elise Stanley, department of physiology and University Health Network — CRC in Cellular Neuroscience

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City of Mississauga invests in University of Toronto

sgupta — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 06:33:30 +0000

City of Mississauga invests in University of Toronto sgupta Fri, 12/13/2013 - 01:33

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Rendering of University of Toronto Mississauga's new Innovation Complex (image courtesy Moriyama & Teshima Architects)

Jane Stirling

Author legacy

Jane Stirling

Topic

The City of Mississauga is investing $10 million over 10 years to help build the University of Toronto Mississauga’s Innovation Complex, a facility that will transform business education and help to develop a culture of innovation and drive economic development in the region.

“This commitment is a testament to the visionary leadership shown by Mayor Hazel McCallion and her council colleagues on behalf of the citizens of Mississauga,” said U of T President Meric Gertler. “We are fortunate to have such a forward-thinking civic partner, one that understands the economic and social significance of universities in creating a prosperous urban environment. Together, we can make the city and region an even better place in which to live, work and thrive.”

The investment is the largest municipal grant ever made to U of T Mississauga. It will support construction of the Innovation Complex, which will house the signature Institute for Management & Innovation (IMI). The Institute will be the home of undergraduate and professional graduate programs that will be integrated with external business and community stakeholders, and aligned with key sectors of industry and commerce.

“This is an investment in the economic future of not only Mississauga but the province of Ontario and Canada,” said Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion. “We are implementing our motto of ‘Leading Today for Tomorrow.’ ”

The investment supports the city’s prosperity pillar, as articulated in its strategic plan. Specifically, the plan notes the importance of developing talent, attracting innovative business, meeting employment needs and creating partnerships for innovation.

The $10 million grant – with an additional $25 million from U of T Mississauga – will support the construction of the $35 million Innovation Complex. The four-storey building, scheduled to open in September 2014, will house the Institute for Management & Innovation as well as space for the Office of the Registrar, the Li Koon Chun Finance Learning Centre and expanded accommodation for the Departments of Economics and Management.

The construction of the Innovation Complex is expected to create about 28 person-years of employment, $2.6 million in labour income, and nearly $1 million in business income in Mississauga. Ongoing expenditures related to IMI are expected to create about 101 full-time jobs, $20.7 million in labour income, and $1.5 million in business income annually in Mississauga.

“We are delighted that council has approved this investment that will build substantial competitive advantage for the city, help to generate new ideas and leaders, and develop a strong base of human talent,” said Professor Deep Saini, U of T vice-president and principal of U of T Mississauga. “This $10-million grant will produce major economic benefits for Mississauga and our region by creating an innovation culture, building a knowledge economy and attracting global business.”

Within the Innovation Complex, IMI will train management graduates in fields as varied as health care, biotechnology, professional accounting and environmental sustainability. Over time, the Institute plans to increase enrolment from 2,300 to almost 3,000 students, and to hire approximately 30 new faculty from around the world.

Jane Stirling is a writer with the University of Toronto Mississauga.

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Remembering Josef Skvorecky

sgupta — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 12:52:41 +0000

Remembering Josef Skvorecky sgupta Wed, 01/04/2012 - 07:52

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Josef Skvorecky, who taught at Erindale College (now UTM) won the Governor General's Award for English Language Fiction. (Photo by Robert Lansdale)

Jane Stirling

Author legacy

Jane Stirling

Our Faculty & Staff

English

Subheadline

Former professor used Erindale College as setting for his work

Celebrated writer and former U of T English and film professor Josef Skvorecky, who used a fictionalized Erindale College (now U of T Mississauga) setting in one of his most famous novels, died Jan. 3. The Engineer of Human Souls (Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1984) is set in the sheltered world of "Edenvale College" in Toronto and won the Governor General's Award for English Language Fiction in 1984.

Skvorecky was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982.

A dissent writer who fled to Canada from Czechoslovakia after the Soviet invasion in 1968, Skvorecky, along with his wife, founded 68 Publishers. The imprint became an important vehicle for dissident writers such as late Czech president Václav Havel and Milan Kundera, whose work The Unbearable Lightness of Being, was made into a movie.

Skvorecky taught fiction, creative writing and film in the Faculty of Arts and Science on the Erindale College campus from 1971 until his retirement in 1990. U of T English professor Sam Solecki, a colleague, wrote Prague Blues: The Fiction of Josef Skvorecky, a discussion and analysis of his work.

In a Globe and Mail obituary, Solecki says, "Skvorecky's writing offers a skepticism about ideologues and ideologies, an insistence on liberal freedoms, an aversion to revolutions and a ‘suspicion that capitalism is probably good, liberalism may be right, and democracy is the closest approximation' that we have to an ideal government... His body of work exists within two literary traditions. In his first 40 years, he introduced Czechs to Western literature; in his last four decades he brought Czech writing to the West."

Among his many awards, Skvorecky won the Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the Order of the White Lion, presented by Czechoslovakia president Havel. He was named a member of the Order of Canada and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

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New health sciences complex opens at U of T Mississauga

sgupta — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 11:27:02 +0000

New health sciences complex opens at U of T Mississauga sgupta Thu, 11/03/2011 - 07:27

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U of T Mississauga's Terrence Donnelly Health Sciences Complex is now officially open. (Rendering courtesy of UTM)

Jane Stirling

Author legacy

Jane Stirling

Topic

Breaking Research