At UBC Science, outstanding scientists and students strive to unravel the principles that underlie our universe - from the subatomic to the macroscopic, from pure mathematics to biotechnology, from ecosystems to galactic systems. Through the breadth and depth of our academic endeavours and the calibre of the people who make up our community, we take pride in discovering new scientific knowledge and preparing Canada’s and the world’s next generation of scientists.

A diverse range of highly ranked programs

With access to master’s and doctoral degrees through nine departments and 350 research groups, our graduate students work with world-class faculty to explore the basic sciences, and to pursue interdisciplinary and applied research across departments and units. UBC’s research excellence in environmental science, math, physics, plant and animal science, computer science, geology and biology is consistently rated best in Canada by international and national ranking agencies.

Committed to outstanding graduate training

UBC Science houses a wide range of prestigious NSERC Collaborative Research and Training Experience and related industry programs: from atmospheric aerosols to high-throughput biology, from biodiversity research and ecosystems services to plant cell wall biosynthesis, from quantum science and new materials to applied geochemistry. The options for enriched graduate training in industry related fields are almost endless.

World-class research infrastructure

Our affiliated institutes and centres include UBC's Michael Smith Laboratories, Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute, Biodiversity Research Centre, Life Sciences Institute, Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences, Mineral Deposit Research Unit, and TRIUMF, Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics.

Top research talent

UBC Science boasts more than 50 Canada Research Chairs, 12 fellows of the Royal Society of London, and has been home to two Nobel Laureates. Our graduate students have won 15 prestigious Vanier Scholarships.

A diverse, supportive community of scholars

UBC Science is committed to excellence, collaboration and inclusion. Women account for 41 per cent of the Faculty's graduate enrollments, and the percentage of international students has increased to 50 per cent over the past decade.

Mission
To nurture an exceptional scientific learning and research environment for the people of British Columbia, Canada, and the world.
 

Research Centres

Biodiversity, Evolution and Ecology

Computational Sciences and Mathematics

Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences

Genomics and Biological Sciences

Human-Computer Interaction

Life Sciences

Chemistry and Materials Science

Physics

Sustainability

Research Facilities

Designed to inspire collaboration and creativity across disciplines, the Earth Sciences Building (ESB) lies at the heart of the science precinct on UBC’s Vancouver Campus. The $75 million facility is home to Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Statistics, the Pacific Institute of the Mathematical Sciences, and the dean’s office of the Faculty of Science. ESB’s teaching facilities will help Canada meet the challenges of a transforming and growing resource sector. Just as importantly, the researchers and students working and learning in the facility will offer a valuable flow of well-trained talent, new ideas, and fresh professional perspectives to industry.

Research Highlights

Receiving more than $120 million in annual research funding, UBC Science faculty members conduct top-tier research in the life, physical, earth and computational sciences. Their discoveries help build our understanding of natural laws—driving insights into sustainability, biodiversity, human health, nanoscience and new materials, probability, artificial intelligence, exoplanets and a wide range of other areas.

UBC Science boasts 50 Canada Research Chairs and 10 fellows of the Royal Society of London, and has been home to two Nobel Laureates. 

Schools / Departments

Department

Graduate Degree Programs

Research Supervisors in Faculty

or browse the list of faculty members in various academic units. You may click each unit to view faculty members appointed in that unit. View the full faculty member directory for more search and filter options.
Name Academic Unit(s) Research Interests
Samuels, Anne Lacey Department of Botany Plant biology; plant cell biology; plant cell walls
Saylor, Joel Edward Department of Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences Paleoaltimetry; Paleoclimatology; Tectonic Basin analysis; Quantitative sediment provenance analysis; Rivers; Tectonics; Sedimentary Basins; Structural Geology; Field Geology; Sedimentology; Stratigraphy; Sequence Stratigraphy; Sediments; Geology
Schafer, Laurel Department of Chemistry catalysis, chemical synthesis, heterocycles, titanium, zirconium, yttrium, tantalum, hydroamination, hydroaminoalkyltion, biodegraable polymers, sustainable synthesis, Green Chemistry, Organometallic and organic chemistry
Schiebinger, Geoffrey Department of Mathematics Genomics; Mathematics and statistics; Applied & Theoretical Statistics; Computational Genomics; data science; Genetics; Genome Sciences; Machine Learning; Measurement technologies; Models Inference and Algorithms; Single-cell RNA sequencing; Theory of Statistics
Schleich, Kristin Department of Physics & Astronomy Theoretical physics, general relativity
Schluter, Dolph Department of Zoology Biological adaptation; Speciation (evolutionary processes); Natural selection and sexual selection; evolution; Origin of species; evolutionary genetics; Adaptive radiation
Schmidt, Mark Department of Computer Science Machine learning; Numerical Optimizaiton; Probabilistic Graphical Models; Causality
Schoof, Christian Department of Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences Geophysics; Ice and Snow; Transformation and Evolution of the Earth Surface; Fluid mechanics; Hydraulic; Asymptotic and Classical Applied Analysis; Differential Equation; applied mathematics; glacier hydrology; Glaciology; ice sheet dynamics
Schulte, Patricia Department of Zoology Molecular biology, biochemistry, physiology, genomics, population genetics, and evolutionary biology to address the question, what are the physiological adaptations that allow animals to live in particular environments?
Scoates, James Department of Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences Igneous petrology; Geochronology; Economic geology; magmatic evolution; layered intrusions; flood basalts; large igneous provinces; Proterozoic anorthosites; magmatic ore deposits
Scott, Douglas Department of Physics & Astronomy Astronomical and space sciences; Physical sciences; Cosmology; Science and Knowledge
Seltzer, Margo Department of Computer Science Computer Systems; Data Quality; Storage; Machine Learning & Systems; Systems for capturing and accessing data provenance; File Systems; databases; Transaction processing systems; Storage and analysis of graph-structured data; New architectures for parallelizing execution; Systems that apply technology to problems in healthcare.; Artificial Intelligence; Decision-making & Action; Software Practices; Networks, Systems and Security
Semenoff, Gordon Walter Department of Physics & Astronomy Particle physics theory (including aspects of field theory and string theory); Physical sciences; Moedal experiment, Large Hadron Collider, CERN; String theory, quantum field theory, statistical mechanics; Theoretical and mathematical physics, the physics of elementary particles, condensed matter physics
Sheffer, Alla Department of Computer Science Computer graphics, shape modeling and geometry processing
Shelhamer, Evan Department of Computer Science Machine learning; Computer vision in artificial intelligence; Artificial intelligence (AI); Machine Learning; Computer Vision / Visual Recognition; Robustness and Adaptation; Self-Supervised / Unsupervised Learning; Applications to Remote Sensing and Sustainability
Shepherd, Bruce Department of Computer Science Natural sciences; Algorithms, Combinatorics, Polyhedra
Sherman, John Department of Chemistry Molecular structure of protein
Shmerkin, Pablo Department of Mathematics Metric and fractal geometry; fractal geometry; Harmonic Analysis; ergodic theory; Connections with additive combinatorics and probability
Shwartz, Vered Department of Computer Science Artificial Intelligence; Machine Learning; Natural Language Processing
Sigal, Leonid Department of Computer Science Computer and information sciences; Artificial Intelligence; Computer Science and Statistics; Parametric and Non-Parametric Inference; Computer Vision; Machine Learning; Semantic Recognition; Vision + Natural Language Processing; Visual Recognition and Understanding
Sigurdson, Kris Department of Physics & Astronomy The Universe, Cosmology, Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Particle Physics, Astrophysics, Cosmic Microwave Background, Cosmic 21-cm Fluctuations, Radio Astronomy, CHIME
Silberman, Lior Department of Mathematics Mathematics and statistics; Mathematics; Analysis on manifolds; Automorphic forms; Group Theory; Homogenous dynamics; Metric geometry; Number theory; Representation Theory; Topology
Slade, Gordon Department of Mathematics Renormalisation, Lace explansion, self-avoiding walk, scaling limits
Smit, Matthijs Department of Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences 1) timing and duration of
Snutch, Terrance Preston Michael Smith Laboratories, Department of Psychiatry Medical biotechnology, n.e.c.; Brain Disorders; Animal models; genomics; Drug discovery & development

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Graduate Student Stories

Recent Publications

This is an incomplete sample of recent publications in chronological order by UBC faculty members with a primary appointment in the Faculty of Science.

 

Using a Longformer Large Language Model for Segmenting Unstructured Cancer Pathology Reports
Publication: JCO clinical cancer informatics
UBC Author(s): Raymond Tak-Yan Ng (Computer Science / Faculty of Science)
Volume: 9
Page Range: e2400143
Publication Date: 1 March 2025

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Hope or Despair Revisited: Assessing Progress and New Challenges in Global Fisheries
Publication: Fish and Fisheries
UBC Author(s): Ussif Rashid Sumaila (Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries / Faculty of Science), Daniel Pauly (Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries / Faculty of Science)
ISSN: 14672960
Volume: 26
Page Range: 257-269
Publication Date: March 2025

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Corrigendum to “Effects of near-infrared radiation in ambient lighting on cognitive performance, emotion, and heart rate variability” [Journal of Environmental Psychology 100 (2024) 102484] (Journal of Environmental Psychology (2024) 100, ...
Publication: Journal of Environmental Psychology
UBC Author(s): Jiaying Zhao (Institute for Resources,Environment & Sustainability / Faculty of Science), Lorne Whitehead (Physics & Astronomy / Faculty of Science)
ISSN: 02724944
Volume: 102
Publication Date: March 2025

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Population genomic analysis based on geographically large-scale samples provides insights into the evolutionary history of the wood oil plant Lindera glauca in East Asia
Publication: Industrial Crops and Products
UBC Author(s): Quentin Charles Cronk (Botany / Faculty of Science)
ISSN: 09266690
Volume: 225
Publication Date: March 2025

View Publication
Protect US racial affinity groups
Publication: Science (New York, N.Y.)
UBC Author(s): Diane Srivastava (Zoology / Faculty of Science)
Volume: 387
Page Range: 937
Publication Date: 28 February 2025

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Aggregating Funnels for Faster Fetch&Add and Queues
Publication: Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming, PPOPP
UBC Author(s): Yuanhao Wei (Computer Science / Faculty of Science)
ISSN: 15420205
Page Range: 99-114
Publication Date: 28 February 2025

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Reproductive success of inbred strain MV31 of the ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi in a self-sustaining inland laboratory culture system
Publication: Heliyon
UBC Author(s): Steven Plotkin (Physics & Astronomy / Faculty of Science)
Volume: 11
Publication Date: 28 February 2025

View Publication

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Recent Thesis Submissions

Doctoral Citations

A doctoral citation summarizes the nature of the independent research, provides a high-level overview of the study, states the significance of the work and says who will benefit from the findings in clear, non-specialized language, so that members of a lay audience will understand it.
Year Citation Program
2024 Dr. Biron-Lattes developed theory and algorithms that enable the principled estimation of complex Bayesian statistical models by leveraging inexpensive computational resources offered by cloud computing platforms. Doctor of Philosophy in Statistics (PhD)
2024 Dr. Yip's research in mathematics focused on arithmetic combinatorics. He has investigated how to understand the interaction between different arithmetic operations over integers and finite fields using various tools. The results might find applications in various areas of mathematics, such as analytic number theory, extremal combinatorics, and finite geometry. Doctor of Philosophy in Mathematics (PhD)
2024 Dr. Yang investigated a series of emergent phenomena in atomically thin quantum materials with rhombohedral stacking. Dr. Yang's research offers new insights into the intertwined relationship between excitons, two-dimensional ferroelectricity and correlated physics. Doctor of Philosophy in Physics (PhD)
2024 A particular subset of dead stars emits periodic pulsed emission, called pulsars. Dr. Dong developed new tools for analysing the individual pulses from these enigmatic sources. He also details the discovery of a new long-period transient source discovered by the CHIME instrument, leading to advancements in this burgeoning field. Doctor of Philosophy in Astronomy (PhD)
2024 Dr. Zurel invented new hidden variable models and classical simulation algorithms for quantum computation to investigate the link between quantum computational advantage and physical notions of nonclassical physics such as quantum contextuality and negative quasiprobabilities. Doctor of Philosophy in Physics (PhD)
2024 Dr. Sun's research focused on incorporating physical knowledge into AI models to enhance their transparency and interpretability. His findings demonstrate that integrating physical principles can significantly improve the performance of deep neural networks, particularly in the context of 3D deep learning. Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science (PhD)
2024 Dr. Zuo’s pioneering research advanced our understanding of titin, a crucial muscle protein. By developing novel two-molecule force spectroscopy (TMFS), he revealed how mutations, misfolding, and oxidative stress affect titin mechanics. His work has deep implications for muscle function and cardiomyopathy research. Doctor of Philosophy in Chemistry (PhD)
2024 Dr. Chinchani studied the effects of non-invasive electrical stimulation on brain waves and behavior, identifying conditions that maximize its effectiveness. His work may lead to the development of novel treatments to improve psychiatric symptoms and enhance the quality of life for individuals with mental illnesses. Doctor of Philosophy in Bioinformatics (PhD)
2024 Dr. Salehzadeh studied how early-life sickness impacts stress hormone regulation. She found that bacterial exposure in early life alters hormone regulation in the brain and immune organs, which may increase susceptibility to neuropsychiatric and immune disorders. These findings provide insight into how childhood illness impacts development. Doctor of Philosophy in Zoology (PhD)
2024 Dr. Li studied the geometry-preserving property of random mappings and introduced a novel algorithm for signal recovery from generative models. His research contributes to the understanding of random mappings and their applications in fields such as signal processing and machine learning. Doctor of Philosophy in Mathematics (PhD)

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