Results of the Future Leaders Prizes Competition
The Emerging and Pandemic Infections Consortium (EPIC) is an integrated network for researchers, trainees and partners working to confront infectious disease challenges. We unite members across the University of Toronto and its hospital partners to accelerate cross-disciplinary work in the understanding and development of new countermeasures against pathogens. A key pillar of EPIC’s work is training the next generation of infectious disease research leaders that will help stop future pandemics and reduce the societal burdens of infectious disease.
The EPIC Future Leaders Prizes celebrate the best and brightest PhD students who graduated each year among the EPIC research community. These competitive prizes identify the most outstanding graduate in each of four streams:
- applied and/or translational research
- clinical research
- fundamental research
- population, global and public health research
The nominees will have successfully defended their thesis in the preceding calendar year. Prize winners will have submitted an excellent thesis, both in scientific content and communication style, as well as demonstrated a high degree of leadership outside of their scientific pursuits.
We are pleased to share the results of our Future Leaders Prizes competition.
2024 Future Leaders Prizes recipients
Eric Armstrong
Clinical research stream
Thesis title: Targeting the genital microbiota to reduce HIV susceptibility
Supervisor: Rupert Kaul (University Health Network)
Jonathan Burnie
Applied and/or translational research stream
Thesis title: Characterizing human and viral proteins in the HIV-1 envelope using novel methods in flow
virometry
Supervisor: Christina Guzzo (University of Toronto Scarborough)
Catharine Chambers
Population, global and public health research stream
Thesis title: Human papillomavirus vaccine uptake and effectiveness among gay, bisexual, and other men
who have sex with men
Supervisor: Ann Burchell (Unity Health Toronto)
Pailin Chiaranunt
Fundamental research stream
Thesis title: Host-microbiota interactions shape the intestinal macrophage landscape
Supervisor: Arthur Mortha (University of Toronto, Temery Faculty of Medicine)
2023 Future Leaders Prize recipient
Hannah Kozlowski
Applied and/or translational stream
Thesis title: Strategies for moving multi-target nucleic acid assays towards clinical use
Supervisor: Warren Chan (University of Toronto, Institute of Biomedical Engineering)
