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Ranked among the world’s top medical schools with the fifth-largest MD enrollment in North America, the UBC Faculty of Medicine is a leader in both the science and the practice of medicine. Across British Columbia, more than 12,000 faculty and staff are training the next generation of doctors, health care professionals, and medical researchers, making remarkable discoveries to help create the pathways to better health for our communities at home and around the world.
The UBC Faculty of Medicine offers a diverse array of training opportunities including cutting-edge research experiences in the biosciences, globally recognized population health education, quality health professional training, as well as several certificate and online training options. The Faculty of Medicine is home to more than 1,700 graduate students housed in 20 graduate programs (14 of which offer doctoral research options). Year after year, research excellence in the Faculty of Medicine is supported by investment from funding sources here at home and around the globe, receiving approximately more than $1.8B in total research funding since 2016.
We value our trainees and the creative input they have to scholarly activities at UBC. Our priority is to enable their maximum potential through flexible opportunities that provide a breadth of experiences tailored to their own individual career objectives. We maintain high standards of excellence, and work to create a community of intellectually and socially engaged scholars that work collaboratively with each other, the university, and the world, with the overarching goal of promoting the health of individuals and communities.
Most Faculty research is conducted under the auspices of 23 centres and institutes that are part of UBC or affiliated with it, in collaboration with our health partners.
UBC Faculty of Medicine provides innovative educational and research programs in the areas of health and life sciences through an integrated and province-wide delivery model in facilities at locations throughout British Columbia.
The Life Sciences Centre is the largest building on the UBC Vancouver campus. Completed in 2004, the $125 million, 52,165 sq metres building was built to accommodate the distributed medical educational program and the Life Sciences Institute.
The Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health (DMCBH), a partnership between the University of British Columbia and Vancouver Coastal Health, unites under one roof research and clinical expertise in neuroscience, psychiatry and neurology in order to accelerate discovery and translate new knowledge into better treatment and prevention strategies. DMCBH has both laboratory and clinical research areas within the Centre proper and in the UBC Hospital Koerner Pavilion. Our core facilities are essential to ongoing collaboration, teaching, and research.
The BC Children's Hospital Research Institute is it the largest research institute of its kind in Western Canada in terms of people, productivity, funding and size. With more than 350,000 square feet of space, the Institute has both 'wet bench' laboratory and 'dry lab' clinical research areas, and other areas to facilitate particular areas of research and training.
New knowledge and innovation are crucial to successfully identifying, addressing and overcoming the increasingly complex health-related challenges that influence the lives of all of us – in British Columbia, in Canada, and in countries and communities around the globe.
The UBC Faculty of Medicine is recognized nationally and internationally for research innovation that advances knowledge and translates new discoveries to improve the health and well-being of individuals and communities. Research opportunities feature extensive collaborations across other faculties, health institutions and health partners across British Columbia, Canada and internationally.
The Faculty provides and fosters research excellence across the full continuum, from basic science to applied science and then to knowledge implementation, with a focus on precision health; cancer; brain and mental health; heart and lung health; population health; and chronic diseases.
| Name | Academic Unit(s) | Research Interests |
|---|---|---|
| Stirling, Peter | Department of Medical Genetics | Clinical oncology; Genetic medicine; Biological and Biochemical Mechanisms; Cancer; cancer genetics; Cell; DNA repair; Genome Instability; Genotoxins; Molecular Genetics; Stress responses |
| Stockler-Ipsiroglu, Sylvia | Department of Pediatrics | Diabetes, Nutrition & Metabolism (Nutrition & Metabolism), pathophysiology and treatment of neurometabolic disorders, ceberal creatine deficiency syndromes, cerebral glucose dificiency syndromes, epilepsy, mental retardation |
| Stoessl, A Jon | Division of Neurology | Parkinson's disease |
| Street, John | Department of Orthopaedics | Helmet performance, Injury prevention |
| Stringhini, Silvia | School of Population and Public Health | social inequalities in chronic diseases and ageing, role of health behaviours in the genesis of social inequalities in health, biological consequences of social inequalities, role of environmental factors in social inequalities in health |
| Strynadka, Natalie | Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology | Blood Research, structure-based design of inhibitors, antibiotic-resistance mechanisms, macromolecular assemblies, bacterial viability pathogenesis |
| Stuart, Gavin | Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology | Medicine |
| Subramaniam, Sriram | Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology | Medical, health and life sciences; cryo-EM; cryo-electron microscopy; Cryoelectron Microscopy; Scanning Electron Microscopy; Advanced Electron Microscopy; drug discovery; Drug-design; Focused ion beams; Electron tomography; Tomography; Single particle imaging; Single particle analysis; structural bioinformatics; Structural Biology; COVID-19 therapeutic design |
| Sutherland, Jason | School of Population and Public Health | Health care effectiveness and outcomes; Health care administration; Access to care; Healthcare costs; Health systems; Patient-Reported Outcomes; Quality; Surgery |
| Swindale, Nicholas Vaughan | Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences | Bioinformatics; Neurosciences, biological and chemical aspects; Neurosciences, medical and physiological and health aspects; Eye and Visual System Diseases; Neuronal Modeling; Neuronal Systems; Visual System |
| Takei, Fumio | Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine | Molecular immunology, cancer, cell-cell interactions |
| Talhouk, Aline | Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology | Human reproduction and development sciences; Computer Science and Statistics; Epidemiology; Bioinformatics; Cancer of the Reproductive System; diagnostic models; Digital health; Machine Learning; personalized medicine; prevention; Privacy |
| Tam, Roger | School of Biomedical Engineering | Machine learning; Biomedical signal processing; Biomedical Design and Innovation; Biomedical Technologies; Computer Science and Statistics; Data Analytics; Medical Imaging; Machine Learning; Neurodegenerative diseases; Precision Medicine; Radiology |
| Tamber, Mandeep | Department of Surgery | Surgery; clinical epidemiology; registry research; epilepsy surgery; Hydrocephalus; Craniofacial surgery; pediatric neurosurgery |
| Tanentzapf, Guy | Department of Cellular & Physiological Sciences | How cell adhesion contributes to muscle function, and stem cell biology |
| Tang, Tricia | Division of Endocrinology | Diabetes; Behavioral and Psychosocial Issues associated with Diabetes Self-management. |
| Taubert, Stefan | Department of Medical Genetics | Other health sciences; Gene regulation and expression; Transcriptomics; Genomics; Aging; beta cells; C. elegans; Diabetes; Gene Regulation and Expression; Gene regulation; Genetics of Aging; genomics; Hypoxia; Metabolism; Molecular Genetics; Mouse; stress; Stress and Cancer; Stress responses; Toxin and Toxicant Metabolism; Transcription |
| Taylor, David | Department of Surgery | Medical, health and life sciences; Vascular surgery and diseases |
| Taylor, Steven | Department of Psychiatry | Anxiety disorders, stress, posttraumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, health anxiety, hypochondriasis, psychotherapy, cognitive-behavior therapy, mental disorders, psychiatric diagnosis |
| Tebbutt, Scott | Division of Respiratory Medicine | Basic medicine and life sciences; Dual organism molecular interaction (fungal spores & human airway epithelium); Early and late reactions in allergic asthma and rhinitis; Diagnostics of acute heart rejection post-transplantation; Neonatal vaccine immunogenicity; Systems biology, biomarkers & bioinformatics; Rheumatic fever and heart disease; COVID-19 |
| Teichman, Joel | Department of Urologic Sciences | Endourology and interstitial cystitis; Kidney stones; Holmium:YAG lithotripsy; Development of optical fibers; Laser lithotripsy; Femtosecond laser ablation |
| Teves, Sheila | Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology | Biochemistry; Genomics; Epigenetics; Genetics; Genome Science; Molecular Epigenetics (MEG); molecular biology; Transcriptional memory and cellular identity in mouse embryonic stem cells |
| Thiessen, Kellie | Midwifery Program | maternal/child health, health policy, health human resource planning, health economics, access to maternal child health services |
| Thompson, Wade | Department of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology & Therapeutics | Health services and systems; ensuring older persons are taking medications that are a good fit; deprescribing; polypharmacy |
| Ti, Lianping | Division of Social Medicine | Epidemiology; Community Health / Public Health; Artificial Intelligence; Drug Abuse; Health Policies; Substance Use; Harm reduction; Public health; Health Services; Administrative data; data science |
This is an incomplete sample of recent publications in chronological order by UBC faculty members with a primary appointment in the Faculty of Medicine.
| Year | Citation | Program |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Dr. Sreenivasan investigated the importance of certain survival signals made up of cytokines that enable medulloblastoma cells to resist chemotherapy. Blocking these survival factors with inhibitors and cytotoxic drugs makes medulloblastoma cells susceptible to treatment and offers a novel approach to combat acquired chemotherapeutic resistance. | Doctor of Philosophy in Experimental Medicine (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Asleh studied the most aggressive form of breast cancer called the basal-like type that lacks successful targeted treatments. Using breast tumor samples from women in Canada, she identified biomarkers that predict which women with basal-like breast cancers benefit most from chemotherapy and drugs targeting the immune system. | Doctor of Philosophy in Interdisciplinary Oncology (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Esfandiari developed an online self-management program for people with lower limb amputation, called Self-Management for Amputee Rehabilitation Using Technology or SMART. SMART potentially provides accessible, low-cost, education after discharge from hospital for patients in both urban and remote areas. | Doctor of Philosophy in Rehabilitation Sciences (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Cheung established a technique to measure oxygen levels in the injured spinal cord. She developed an implantable biosensor to monitor the spinal cord in a large animal model before its clinical translation. Her work will advance and improve the current clinical care of patients with spinal cord injury. | Doctor of Philosophy in Neuroscience (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Qiu addressed the use of antidepressants in the postpartum for those who do not respond to treatment and aimed to understand what biological factors influence efficacy and found it to be affiliated with the immune system. Her work is intended to help postpartum individuals seeking antidepressants in better treatment decision-making. | Doctor of Philosophy in Neuroscience (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Zhang's dissertation revealed that it takes much longer than generally expected for high school students who speak English as a second language to catch up with their peers on academic language competency. It highlighted the importance of the language support offered in the schools for assuring the academic success of these students. | Doctor of Philosophy in Audiology and Speech Sciences (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Hu has shown how the protein complexes produced by Salmonella and other similar pathogens infect humans, animals and plants. Bacterial infections are one of the world's most common issues for hospitality and death. This research advanced our understanding of bacterial pathogenicity and aided the development of new drugs and vaccines. | Doctor of Philosophy in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Ramsook examined how neural mechanisms contribute to sex differences in the fatigue of the respiratory muscles. His work contributes to advancing the understanding of human physiology and exercise performance, with an emphasis on the unique qualities of the respiratory system in males and females. | Doctor of Philosophy in Rehabilitation Sciences (PhD) |
| 2022 | Dr. Forrest examined the health implications of social networking through an investigation of mental and sexual health outcomes associated with app use among gay and bisexual men. His research findings have implications for public health programming in the digital era. | Doctor of Philosophy in Population and Public Health (PhD) |
| 2022 | Patients with chronic wounds and extensive skin loss injuries have limited therapeutic option. Dr. Pakyari showed that through immune modulation of donated skin grafts and synthetic liquid dermal matrix generation, we can facilitate and accelerate acute and chronic wound healing process. | Doctor of Philosophy in Experimental Medicine (PhD) |