Congratulations to Dr. Anna Blakney and Dr. Carolina Tropini from the School of Biomedical Engineering on being appointed Canada Research Chairs, amongst 19 chairs at UBC.

The Canada Research Chairs Program invests up to $311 million per year to attract and retain some of the world’s most accomplished and promising researchers in engineering and the natural sciences, health sciences, humanities and social sciences.

Dr. Anna Blakney, an Assistant Professor in SBME and the Michael Smith Laboratories at UBC Vancouver campus, was awarded a new Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Nucleic Acid Bioengineering. The Blakney Lab is “a multidisciplinary group of engineers, immunologists and molecular biologists investigating the interactions between RNA, biomaterials and the immune system to prevent and treat disease.”

Dr. Carolina Tropini, an Assistant Professor in SBME and the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, was awarded a new Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Quantitative Microbiota Biology for Health Applications. Her expertise is in engineering new microbes and tools to treat the chronic diseases, allergies and immune disorders that have resulted from lifestyle changes over the past 100 years.

Tier 2 Chairs are given to “exceptional emerging researchers, acknowledged by their peers as having the potential to lead in their field.” For each Tier 2 Chair, the institution receives $100,000 annually for five years, with an additional $20,000 annual research stipend for first-term Tier 2 Chairs.

This year, 40 new and renewed Canada Research Chairs were appointed at 22 institutions across Canada.

Original article credit: Applied Science.