We are pleased to announce that the Executive Committee of the Governing Council has approved the appointment of Professor Christopher Yip for a five-year term as Associate Vice-President, International Partnerships, beginning July 1, 2017.

This newly created role reports dually to the Vice-President, Research & Innovation and the Vice-President, International and reflects the important priority accorded by the University to the goal of internationalization. We look forward to having Professor Yip provide leadership in the areas of international academic and industry partnerships, and engagement opportunities to support Divisions across all three campuses.

Professor Christopher Yip is a leading scholar in the field of single-molecule biophysics. He is a faculty member in the Department of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry, the Department of Biochemistry, and the Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering. He is a Principal Investigator in the Donnelly Centre for Cellular & Biomolecular Research at the University of Toronto.

As Director of the Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering (IBBME), Professor Yip has provided leadership to more than 100 faculty members from engineering, medicine, and dentistry that are engaged in discovery and development in the areas of neuroscience and sensory stimulation, biomaterials and tissue engineering, molecular systems biology and nanotechnology, as well as medical device and drug delivery system design.

He has been a strong advocate and creator of international research opportunities for students and scholars. Through the Wildcat Voyager Scholarships, IBBME encourages its PhD students by providing funds for international research partnerships, and to actively engage in scientific conferences and workshops. Professor Yip and IBBME have also played important roles in the development and implementation of the Lyon Sachs Collaborative Research Fund. This fund rapidly scales up research collaborations by enabling joint symposia and workshops, funding student and faculty travel between Haifa and Toronto, as well as enabling sabbatical visits and short-term graduate student exchanges. The fund has also sparked cutting-edge research and enabled two-way flow of immense talent between the Technion Institute of Technology and the University of Toronto.

Professor Yip received his B.A.Sc. in Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry from the University of Toronto, and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota. Joining the Department of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry in 1997, he was promoted to Associate Professor in 2002 and to Full Professor in 2007. He was a member of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s Institute of Genetics Advisory Board and has served on grant panels at the Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and the National Institutes of Health.

Professor Yip has been honoured with a Premier’s Research Excellence Award, a Faculty Teaching Award, and the Faculty of Medicine’s Graduate Faculty Teaching Award for Sustained Contribution to Excellence in Graduate Teaching. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada. He has held a Tier II Canada Research Chair in Molecular Imaging.

Please join us in welcoming Professor Yip to this new role.