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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 |
|---|---|---|
| Palepu, Anita | Division of General Internal Medicine | Health services and systems; homeless; Addiction; housing; Epidemiology; health care utilization; safe medication prescribing |
| Panenka, William | Department of Psychiatry | Brain, Behaviour & Development |
| Pang, Catherine C | Department of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology & Therapeutics | Cardiovascular pharmacology, education, hypertension |
| Park, Yongjin | Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, Department of Statistics | Other basic medicine and life sciences; High dimensional data analysis; Biostatistical methods; Bioinformatics; single-cell genomics; Computational Biology; Causal inference; Bayesian machine learning |
| Parker, Seth | Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology | Metabolomics; Cell metabolism; Pediatric cancer; mass spectrometry; Childhood disease; Cancer; Solute carriers; Metabolism; Mitochondria; Stable-isotope tracing; Functional assay development |
| Paterson, Ryan | Department of Urologic Sciences | medical and surgical management of kidney stone disease, laparoscopic urologic surgery, and the surgical treatment of benign prostatic enlargement |
| Patrick, David | School of Population and Public Health | Health sciences; Public and population health; Antibiotics and Resistance; Pharmacoepidemiology; Responding to the Threat of Antimicrobial Resistance at Population Level; Response to Emerging Infectious Diseases |
| Pavlidis, Paul | Department of Psychiatry, Michael Smith Laboratories | Neurosciences, medical and physiological and health aspects; Engineering and technology; genomics; Bioinformatics; cellular and molecular neuroscience; Genetics; disorders of the nervous system; single-cell genomics; Computational Biology; Gene regulation |
| Pearce, Margo | ||
| Peebles, Erin | Health equity; Environmental, developmental and social factors of youth health; Psychosocial, sociocultural and behavioral determinants of health; medical education; equity, diversity, inclusion; social determinants of health | |
| Pelech, Steven | Division of Neurology | Neurological disorders (except neuromuscular diseases); Mechanisms of carcinogenesis; Adaptive immunity; Medical virology; Protein Microarrays; Protein Kinases; Protein Phosphatases; Protein phosphorylation; Cell signalling; Signal transduction; Cell division; COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; Neurological Disease; Cancer; Immunology |
| Penninger, Josef | Department of Medical Genetics | Genetic medicine; Medical and biomedical engineering; Neurosciences, biological and chemical aspects; Neurosciences, medical and physiological and health aspects; BH4; Blood vessel engineering; Bone Remodeling; Cancer; Cardiovascular Regeneration; Glycoproteomics in cancer; Haploid stem cells; Immunopathology; Neurodegenerative diseases; Tissue Engineering |
| Perrone, Lucy | Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine | Improving health outcomes through improved diagnostic testing quality, Improving capacity through strengthening health and laboratory systems, Using effective quality improvement tools and approaches to improve diagnostic service delivery |
| Petrella, Robert | Department of Family Practice | Aging; rehabilitation; Geriatrics; Chronic Disease prevention, management and control; Physical Activity; Lifestyle management |
| Pettersen, Jacqueline | Division of Neurology | memory; impact of small vessel disease on cognition; role of cerebrovascular disease in Alzheimer |
| Phang, P Terence | Department of Surgery | Colorectal cancer surgery, clinical research, diagnostic imaging, laparoscopy, sphicter-preserving resection, transanal microsurgery, medical education |
| Phillips, Anthony | Department of Psychiatry | Addictions Psychiatry, Basic Neurosciences |
| Pike, Ian | Department of Pediatrics | Health promotion and disease prevention; Child and Youth Injury Prevention; Safety-oriented culture; Indigenous child injury prevention; Social Marketing; Child Passenger Safety; Risky play; Drowning prevention |
| Pollock, Courtney | Department of Physical Therapy | Neurosciences, biological and chemical aspects; Neurosciences, medical and physiological and health aspects; Physical therapy; Rehabilitation medicine; impact of neurological changes associated with aging, disease and injury on motor control; motor control of walking balance and balance reactions |
| Poon, Brenda | School of Population and Public Health | Population-level early identification and early intervention for children with special needs; Complex systems of coordinated service delivery and supports; Family-centered services; Integrated child health information systems; Community-based research regarding social determinants of children |
| Pouladi, Mahmoud | Department of Medical Genetics | Genetic medicine; Fragile X syndrome; Huntington disease; Neurodegenerative diseases |
| Preston, Roanne | Department of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology & Therapeutics | obstetric anesthesia |
| Price, Morgan | Department of Family Practice | Health Information Systems; Design; family medicine; eHealth Adoption; eHealth Requirements Engineering; eHealth Ux/UI Design; software engineering; decision support systems; Treatment Adherence; Consumer eHealth; Health System Improvement; primary care; Team-based care |
| Prior, Jerilynn | Division of Endocrinology | Menstruation, ovulation, osteoporosis, perimenopause, menopause, hot flushes, progesterone, estrogen dominance, women’s health, menopause, birth control pills, breast health, calcium, vitamin D, insulin resistance, eating attitudes/eating restraint, premenstrual symptoms, anovulatory androgen excess (PCOS) |
| Purssell, Roy | Department of Emergency Medicine | Emergency medicine, impaired driving, substance abuse, laboratory testing, adverse drug reactions |
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Dr. Nizamudheen studied novel therapeutic strategies for two childhood genetic eye diseases, Aniridia syndrome and Usher syndrome 1D, in mouse and 3D tissue models. Drug (Ataluren) and stem cell approaches were used to replace the missing Pax6 and Cdh23 proteins, rescuing the structural abnormalities and improving vision in the mouse models. | Doctor of Philosophy in Experimental Medicine (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Wilcox studied HealthWISE, a tool created by UN agencies to improve the occupational health of health workers using local resources. Focusing on its use in 7 hospitals in Africa, she concluded that strengthening international organizations to better support and facilitate the sustainable implementation of such interventions would be beneficial. | Doctor of Philosophy in Population and Public Health (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. He studied cell divisions that occur in the mammary gland. This research indicates a new and crucial role for the breast cancer gene, BRCA1, and suggests new ways to detect and possibly treat hereditary breast cancers that arise in young women. | Doctor of Philosophy in Cell and Developmental Biology (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Kaal examined the care people who survived cancer early in life receive in the BC healthcare system. She found that survivors comparatively receive more care and that coordinating care between different doctors matters in terms of the number of doctor visits and cost of care. This work benefits the growing population of young cancer survivors. | Doctor of Philosophy in Population and Public Health (PhD) |
| 2021 | Is exercise good for us? Undoubtedly it is, however, Dr. Morrison found that physically active older individuals can have heart disease and should undergo a cardiac assessment if engaging in vigorous exercise. This research increases heart health awareness in older physically active individuals to prevent adverse heart events during exercise. | Doctor of Philosophy in Experimental Medicine (PhD) |
| 2021 | Some chemotherapy drugs can severely damage the heart, leading to lifelong heart complications. Dr. Christidi generated heart cells from patients' stem cells to identify ways to predict and prevent chemotherapy induced side effects. | Doctor of Philosophy in Experimental Medicine (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Babaeijandaghi dissected the role of the immune system in muscle regeneration. His work unveiled the therapeutic potential of a new class of immune-modulatory drugs to treat a debilitating genetic muscular disorder called Duchenne muscular dystrophy. | Doctor of Philosophy in Experimental Medicine (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Basham studied tuberculosis (TB) survivor health, including post-TB mortality, airway disease, cardiovascular disease, and depression. These studies contributed to our understanding of the long-term health outcomes of TB survivors, and the need for person-centred models of TB care. | Doctor of Philosophy in Population and Public Health (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Hammond examined changes in the functional properties of human blood stem cells with advancing age. Among his findings was an aging-associated change in the growth-signal requirements and the amount of time required for blood stem cells to divide. | Doctor of Philosophy in Experimental Medicine (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Awad examined sex differences in survival from out of hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). Results showed important variations between men and women in OHCA intervention and outcomes. The findings provided evidence to inform current clinical practice and generate an evidence-based approach to treatment of OHCA, which will lead to saving more lives. | Doctor of Philosophy in Experimental Medicine (PhD) |