In spite of the challenges to research productivity posed by the pandemic, the CoM has been able to celebrate many research successes in the past few years. Most recently, we had a number of very successful Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) grant applications in the Fall Project Competition, and I want to acknowledge those researchers and the important funded work they will be conducting.

Adding to his incredible career as the “father of agricultural medicine,” Dr. Jim Dosman is the principle investigator in a $1.4 million project over five years to examine what contributes to the mental wellness of Indigenous peoples in the home setting. More details on this work was provided in a recent USask announcement.

Dr. Juan Ianowski is leading a team of researchers, including from our college: Drs. Julian Tam, Asmahan AbuArish, Veronica Campanucci, and Chung-Chun (Anderson) Tyan; in a three-part project to advance understanding of cystic fibrosis. More information about this project, funded by $810,900 over five years, can be found in this USask article.

Also successful in recent CIHR funding Priority Announcement areas were Dr. Anil Kumar, with $300,000 for work in the area of infection and immunity (Early Career Research Support), and Dr. Deborah Anderson, with $100,000 for work in breast cancer research.

I’d also like to congratulate successful participants in one of our college’s internal research funding programs, and look forward to the successes they will have due to the support from ComBRIDGE, offered and coordinated by the Office of the Vice-Dean Research. Those successful researchers are: Drs. John Howland and Robert Laprairie, principle investigators with co-applicants Drs. Ian Winship, Christopher Phenix and Allen Chan; and Drs. Valerie Verge and Kam Chan, principle investigators with co-applicants Drs. Anand Krishnan, Jenna-Lynn Senger and Christine Webber.

While budgets are increasingly a challenge, providing internal support programs to help our CoM researchers achieve success continues to be an important priority of our college.

I know you will join me in congratulating these researchers on their recent successes, and in thanking all our researchers and those supporting them on their continued commitment through challenging times.