Faculty of Science

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.

Faculty Website

Fact Sheet

Mission

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

771

Master's Students

(2021)
1000

Doctoral Students

(2021)
435

Graduate Degrees Awarded

(2021)
434

Full-Time Faculty

(2021)
128

million in Research Awards

(2020/2021)

Research Centres

Biodiversity, Evolution and Ecology

Computational Sciences and Mathematics

Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences

Geophysical Inversion Facility
Lithoprobe: Canada's National Geoscience Project
Mineral Deposit Research Unit
Pacific Centre for Isotopic and Geochemical Research
Seismic Laboratory for Imaging and Modeling

Genomics and Biological Sciences

Centre for High-Throughput Biology
Geomatics for Informed Decisions Network
Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics
Michael Smith Laboratories

Human-Computer Interaction

Institute for Computing, Information and Cognitive Systems
Vancouver Institute for Visual Analytics

Life Sciences

Chemistry and Materials Science

Physics

Sustainability

Research Facilities

Designed to inspire collaboration and creativity across disciplines, the new 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 updated 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 new 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
Sheffer, Alla	Department of Computer Science	Computer graphics, shape modeling and geometry processing
Shepherd, Bruce	Department of Computer Science	algorithms, optimization, convex geometry, and graph theory
Sherman, John	Department of Chemistry	Molecular structure of protein
Shmerkin, Pablo	Department of Mathematics
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	Molecular and genetic analysis of the nervous system
Solymosi, Jozsef	Department of Mathematics	Additive Combinatorics, Discrete and Computational Geometry, Graph theory, and Combinatorial Number Theory
Song, Liang	Department of Botany	Plant genomics; Environmental stresses; Seed development; Gene Expression
Song, Dongjoon		,
Sossi, Vesna	Department of Physics & Astronomy	Medical Imaging, Brain imaging
Srivastava, Diane	Department of Zoology	biodiversity, tropics, Costa Rica, insects, mites, food webs, habitat loss, Community ecology, conservation, how species loss from food webs can affect the way ecosystems function
Stairs, Ingrid	Department of Physics & Astronomy	pulsars, gravity, general relativity, radio astronomy, radio pulsars, pulsar searches and long-term timing, Radio astronomy
Stamp, Philip C	Department of Physics & Astronomy	Theoretical physics, strongly-correlated condensed matter systems, quantum magnetism, decoherence, quantum information, gravity
Straus, Suzana	Department of Chemistry	Chemical sciences; Proteins; Antimicrobial peptides; Protein-protein interactions; Structure-function; Viral membrane proteins
Stull, Roland	Department of Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences	Meteorology and weather; weather; Meteorology; atmospheric science; numerical weather prediction; clean energy meteorology; storms; transportation weather; forest fire weather; weather disasters; atmospheric boundary layers; aviation meteorology
Sugioka, Kenji	Department of Zoology	Basic medicine and life sciences; Cell division; Animal morphogenesis; Cytoskeletal dynamics
Sumaila, Ussif Rashid	Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs	Bioeconomics, marine ecosystem valuation and the analysis of global issues such as fisheries subsidies, IUU (illegal, unreported and unregulated) fishing and the economics of high and deep seas fisheries
Summers, Alexander	Department of Computer Science	Programming languages and software engineering; programming languages; software engineering
Sun, Chin		,
Sutherland, Danica	Department of Computer Science

Graduate Student Stories

Jungsoo Park

Doctor of Philosophy in Botany (PhD)

Microbial interactions with photosynthetic hosts

Mackenzie Kinney

Doctor of Philosophy in Zoology (PhD)

Species Hybridization as a Mode of Rapid Evolution in Response to Environmental Change

MengXing Na

Doctor of Philosophy in Physics (PhD)

Coherent control of ultrafast dynamics of materials studied with time and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy

Mihai Cirstea

Doctor of Philosophy in Microbiology and Immunology (PhD)

The Microbiome and Parkinson's Disease

Amelia Hesketh

Doctor of Philosophy in Zoology (PhD)

Potential impacts of ocean acidification on the Pacific oyster, Crassostrea gigas

Xunyu Liang

Doctor of Philosophy in Physics (PhD)

Dark matter in form of the axion quark nuggets

Florian Lüskow

Doctor of Philosophy in Oceanography (PhD)

Trophodynamics of planktonic communities in coastal British Columbian waters, with focus on gelatinous zooplankton

Egor Larionov

Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science (PhD)

Contact Mechanics in Physically-based Simulation

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.

Recent Thesis Submissions

Catalytic synthetic designs of aminated polyolefins with tunable dynamic interactions and material applications (Chemistry - PHD)
Measuring enhanced carbon dioxide exchange between the atmosphere and mine waste derived from ultramafic hosted mineral deposits (Geological Sciences - MSC)
Investigation of diazeniumdiolate formation by the fragin biosynthesis pathway in Burkholderia cenocepacia h111 (Genome Science and Technology - MSC)
Hyaluronan-mediated modulation of human neutrophil function (Microbiology and Immunology - PHD)
Optical methods for rapid quantitative analysis of bitumen content in oil sands (Chemistry - MSC)
Exploring extreme limits of chemical bonding and their applications in functional materials designs (Chemistry - PHD)
The catalytic synthesis of amine monomers for amine containing materials using hydroaminoalkylation (Chemistry - MSC)
Genetic analysis of signaling pathways mediated by receptor like protein SNC2 and transcription factor SARD1 in Arabidopsis thaliana (Botany - PHD)
Improving water oxidation with iridium catalysts (Chemistry - PHD)
Hidden figures : an untold story of the impact of postnatal multiple micronutrient deficiencies on host phenome and gut microbiome : [supplementary material] (Microbiology and Immunology - PHD)
Hidden figures : an untold story of the impact of postnatal multiple micronutrient deficiencies on host phenome and gut microbiome (Microbiology and Immunology - PHD)
Patrolling monocyte development and regulation of obesity, tumour metastases, and Alzheimer's disease (Microbiology and Immunology - PHD)
Iron(II) coordination compounds with improved octahedral character and photophysical properties for solar energy harvesting (Chemistry - MSC)
Functional materials from cellulose nanocrystals (Chemistry - PHD)
Major features of macroevolution : how phylogenies vary across time, clades, and environmental gradients (Zoology - PHD)
Integrative analysis of short- and long-read single-cell RNA-seq to understand transcriptomic landscape changes in Non-obstructive Azoospermia (Bioinformatics - MSC)
Photochemistry of matrix isolated chiral molecules (Chemistry - PHD)
Functional and biochemical characterization of novel genetic variants in IRAK4 and IRF4 causing human inborn errors of immunity (Microbiology and Immunology - MSC)
Defining the role of partially covalent weak interactions in chemical reactions (Chemistry - PHD)
Exploring Cannabis sativa's response to powdery mildew (Golovinomyces ambrosiae) infection (Genome Science and Technology - MSC)
New Raman scattering enhancement methods with potential for improving the detection of breath VOCs (Physics - PHD)
Rational design of Notch2 and ER-AF2 inhibitors as prospective bladder cancer and breast cancer therapies (Bioinformatics - MSC)
Characterization and functional analysis of two redundant MAPKKKs in plant immunity (Botany - PHD)
Development and application of consensus hit-calling protocols for the virtual screening of ‘undruggable’ and difficult drug targets (Bioinformatics - PHD)
Regulation of salicylic acid signaling : transcriptional repression in Arabidopsis thaliana and perception in Physcomitrium patens (Botany - PHD)
Towards the development of robust semiconducting polymer dots for applications in bioanalysis and imaging (Chemistry - PHD)
Fast CO₂ conversion by molecular electrocatalysts (Chemistry - PHD)
Single cell profiling of the immune system landscape in Lyn deficiency and colorectal cancer (Microbiology and Immunology - PHD)
1,3-N,O-Chelated early-transition-metal complexes for the activation and formation of C−E (E = H, C, N, O) bonds (Chemistry - PHD)
Biochemical and structural studies of enzymes from the azomycin and beta-ethynylserine biosynthetic pathways (Chemistry - PHD)

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
2021	There are many who believe that genes commonly code for more than one functional product, through a process called alternative splicing. Dr. Bhuiyan studied the evidence for this claim, and showed that - despite what we learn in our textbooks - alternative splicing is not as common as we thought.	Doctor of Philosophy in Bioinformatics (PhD)
2021	Dr. Sauvé prepared organic semiconductors with novel optical properties and morphologies for potential application in electronic devices and in encryption. He also developed new luminescent dyes for efficient displays and biological imaging.	Doctor of Philosophy in Chemistry (PhD)
2021	Dr. Yaghmaiean uncovered a novel group of proteins called receptor-like cytoplasmic kinases, which function downstream of other proteins and have redundant functions of transducing immune signals in the model plant Arabidopsis. These results provide new insights on such proteins as common transducers in different plant immune signalling events.	Doctor of Philosophy in Botany (PhD)
2021	Dr. Yang researched fractals and decoupling in Euclidean harmonic analysis. Dr. Yang studied the size and geometric figures contained in fractals, or geometric objects possessing some self-similarity but highly rugged and oscillatory in nature. The decomposition of waves and their size properties in the physical space were studied using decoupling.	Doctor of Philosophy in Mathematics (PhD)
2021	Dr. Choudhary investigated the coordination chemistry of radiometal ions, which are crucial for developing new metal-based radiopharmaceuticals. She synthesized diverse chelators for small to medium-sized ions and studied the effect of donor groups on ion chelation to deepen the understanding of their potential uses for clinical imaging and therapy.	Doctor of Philosophy in Chemistry (PhD)
2021	Dr. Moisseeva's work focused on improving our understanding of how wildfire smoke spreads in the atmosphere. She developed a method for estimating how high above the Earth's surface smoke from wildfires will rise. Her findings help improve the accuracy of air quality models and reduce negative smoke impacts for downwind communities.	Doctor of Philosophy in Atmospheric Science (PhD)
2021	Dr. Janzen systematically studied the establishment of a replicative niche by Salmonella bacteria within host cells. Her findings set a new paradigm for future Salmonella research and demonstrated the necessity of a wholistic view of Salmonella-host interactions to illuminate the poorly understood Salmonella replicative niche.	Doctor of Philosophy in Microbiology and Immunology (PhD)
2021	Dr. Kostelnik studied new radioactive drugs for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. He found a number of compounds that form highly stable bonds with radioactive metals. These studies assist in the development of optimal radiopharmaceuticals for a wide range of diseases.	Doctor of Philosophy in Chemistry (PhD)
2021	Dr. Zhan studied the impact of genome doubling on the evolution of organisms. He found that genome doubling frequently coincides with the formation of new species but does not necessarily improve the evolutionary success of eukaryotic organisms. His work has helped to understand the role of genome doubling in shaping the biodiversity on Earth.	Doctor of Philosophy in Bioinformatics (PhD)
2021	Dr. Livingston studied the cell biology of cannabis glandular trichomes, which are tiny structures that produce cannabinoids such as THC and CBD. His work revealed how the trichomes develop, and how the plant cells can produce and store cannabinoids. His work provides a molecular roadmap for cannabis production in a growing Canadian industry.	Doctor of Philosophy in Botany (PhD)