Career Opportunities

Research Interests: Indigenous literature, Cinema of Quebec, Francophone Indigenous narrative arts, Environmental Humanities, Archives and cinema studies, Quebec-Indigenous studies, Decolonial and anticolonial theory, Research creation

Potential project areas:

Indigenous literatures of Quebec

Quebec Studies

Cinema studies of Canada

Environmental humanities of Quebec and Canada

Franco-Canadian Cultural Studies

Research Interests: neurodevelopment in newborns, early-life brain injury, brain development

Research Interests: Pharmacogenomics, Pain management, Medical genetics, Model organism genetics, Drug reactions

Potential project areas:

In our work, we strive to make a meaningful impact on maternal and child health by contributing to leading-edge research aimed at improving pain management.

Safe and effective pain management is influenced by individual genetic differences that dictate both how we feel pain and how we respond to specific pain relievers. Using pharmacogenomics, the study of how genetic variability contributes to individual drug responses, we are identifying genetic factors that can help predict an individual’s need for, and subsequent response to, specific pain relievers.

As part of the multi-disciplinary Canadian Pharmacogenomics Network for Drug Safety (CPNDS) based at the University of British Columbia, candidates will work closely with clinicians, scientists, and patients across Canada to develop a pipeline from genetic discoveries to predictive genetic testing to help select the safest and most effective pain relievers for women and children based on their unique genetic signatures. Candidates will lead projects within one of two interconnected research themes focused on improving pain management through pharmacogenomics:

1. Design, conduct, and disseminate findings of genetic association studies aimed at uncovering genetic factors that contribute to differences in pain perception and response to pain relievers
   • Focused on predicting variability in morphine-based pain relief for children and occurrence of painful toxicities resulting from childhood cancer treatment (e.g., methotrexate-induced mucositis)
   • Opportunities to explore other pain management questions stemming from collaborative pursuits and develop clinical practice guidelines to enable clinical implementation of genetic testing
2. Establish a C. elegans platform to discover and validate genetic factors that contribute to differences in pain perception and response to pain relievers
   • Encompassing discovery of novel genetic components of pain/nociception (e.g., influencing noxious mechanosensation) and response to pain relievers (e.g., morphine)
   • Validating roles for novel genetic factors uncovered through clinical genetic association studies (described in the research theme above) in relevant pain and/or medication response pathways

Candidates will conduct research at the BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute where they will have access to state-of-the-art molecular biology, genotyping, sequencing and analysis platforms housed within CPNDS-developed laboratories for drug safety research and implementation.

Research Interests: Why and how communities with little political power organize and negotiate with their governments, Civil society, LGBTQ+ policy, Labor politics, Health policy, Latin American politics

Potential project areas:

I am particularly interested in students who are developing projects on LGBTQ+ politics, especially in the Global South and on transgender rights. I am also interested in students working on issues in Bolivia.

Research Interests: Corporate Reporting, Disclosures and Governance, Sustainability and Climate Finance, Digital Economy and Value of Data & AI, Financial Intermediaries, Firm Information Environment, Innovation and Product Market

Research Interests: social connection, social support, stress, coping, conflict and negotiation, hormones, neuroendocrinology

Potential project areas:

I am currently recruiting postdocs interested in:

• understanding how hormonal changes during puberty affect teenagers’ social and emotional development

• investigating how loneliness and social contact “get under the skin” to affect our physical health

• developing interventions to promote social connection

Research Interests: Knowledge translation and implementation science in health, Health and community services, Health promotion and disease prevention, Social and biological determinants of aging, Aging process, Population health interventions, Public and population health

Potential project areas:

Healthy aging

Implementation science

Scale-up of health promoting innovations

Adapting effective health promoting innovations for equity deserving groups

Health equity

Equity in implementation science

Research Interests: Antimicrobial resistant bacteria, Bacterial Vaccines, Childhood infections, Epidemiology, Immune System, Vaccine Development, Vaccine immunity, Clinical trials and observational studies

Potential project areas:

My research encompasses the full breadth of vaccine science via a unique combination of laboratory, clinical and epidemiologic research, integrating an exciting and innovative range of work. This breadth of expertise enables me to respond quickly to changing priorities, exemplified during the COVID-19 pandemic when I tackled diverse knowledge gaps rapidly and produced high quality results to inform policy – further detailed in the COVID-19 productivity impact assessment. My research program includes three complementary focus areas in an innovative molecule-to-population approach.

Vaccine Development. Develop new highly immunogenic vaccines and a novel vaccine platform.

Our group is currently focussed on developing vaccines against the global threat of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Our work focuses on development of a vaccine against Klebsiella – a ‘critical’ priority pathogen according to the World Health Organization (WHO). We have designed new vaccines against Klebsiella, developing new mouse models of Klebsiella infection, and designed and tested novel vaccine antigens in these models.

Vaccine Immunity. Enhance immunity in individuals by optimizing immune responses to vaccines.

We are on the cusp of a transformative paradigm shift in vaccine research, catalyzed by the discovery from my group that a person’s immune status at time of vaccination, determines the outcome of vaccine response. I have been the PI of clinical trials, and evaluated antibody responses to infections and vaccines, including with systems biology approaches. This involved development and use of assays to measure antibody response and function after immunization in humans and mice. For example, a Haemophilus influenzae type a vaccine has been developed in Canada, and is ready for phase 1 clinical trials, where salivary antibody analysis will be done in my lab, using a salivary assay that our group developed. Of note, this vaccine is being developed in Canada because of the particularly high incidence of Haemophilus influenzae type a disease in Indigenous populations.

Vaccine Effectiveness. Improve protection in the population by clinical vaccine evaluation.

I have multicentre national and international phase 1-4 clinical trials and observational studies to evaluate vaccine effectiveness after implementation and across the age spectrum. Specific clinical trials that I have been PI/co-PI include:

Mix-and-match study of three COVID-19 vaccines; n=1200 adults, 6 sites

Responses to Tdap vaccine in HIV-infected vs. HIV-uninfected pregnant women; n=200

2 vs. 3 doses of pneumococcal conjugate vaccine in infants; n=248, 4 sites

Compare different meningococcal vaccine schedules in adolescents; n=324, 3 sites

My group’s contributions have shaped national and global policy. For example, our studies on pertussis immunization during pregnancy have addressed (i) the burden of disease in infants, (ii) optimal timing of vaccination during pregnancy, and (iii) the impact of immunization during pregnancy on later vaccine responses during infancy. Our work has also provided evidence for reducing the number of doses for different vaccines (e.g., Streptococcus pneumoniae, Neisseria meningitidis, human papillomavirus), with major potential healthcare cost savings. Across all of these research areas, our group has played a central role in the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic.