Dr Mario Thomas

Dr Mario Thomas has been appointed the inaugural director of the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario (BIO) at the Univ of Guelph for a three-year term. BIO is the global headquarters for discovering, identifying and cataloguing species using DNA barcoding technology and coordinates the International Barcode of Life project with more than 1000 researchers in 25 countries. He will work with BIO's recently formed board of directors chaired by Dr John Livernoise, U of G's interim VP research. Thomas is a veteran manager of business development and commercialization initiatives in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors. Most recently, he was president of Proteocyte Diagnostics developing and commercializing diagnostics technology, for early diagnosis of precancers and cancers. Prior to that, Thomas was managing director of the Centre for Commercialization of Research (CCR), a Centre of Excellence for Commercialization and Research (CECR) managed by the Ontario Centres of Excellence. He holds a PhD in chemistry and a BSc from Laval Univ and a diploma in business administration from École des Haute Études Commerciales at the Univ of Montreal….

The 2015 Killam Prize winners have bee announced. They are: Dr David Bentley (humanities), Western Univ — a scholar of Canadian poetry; Dr Vijay K Bhargava (engineering), Univ of British Columbia — wireless communications; Dr Victoria Kaspi (natural sciences), McGill Univ — the study of rapidly spinning compact neutron stars called pulsars; Dr Donald Savoie (social sciences), Univ of Moncton — public policy, public administration and federalism; and, Dr Lorne Tyrrell (health sciences) , Univ of Alberta — the discovery of several potent anti-virals against Hepatitis B. The awards will be presented May 12 at the Governor General's residence in Ottawa....