Exceptional scholars celebrated with prestigious Killam Awards

Every year, one of UCalgary’s most prestigious awards celebrates excellence in research and leadership. Recipients of this year’s Killam Awards are no exception. From geoscience, parents’ mental health, preventing sports injuries, and fighting cancer with the microbiome to using literature to bring Jews and Palestinians closer, there’s exceptional scholarship, teaching, and mentorship in almost every field.

This year’s awards, presented in a virtual ceremony on Oct. 14, celebrated the creation of a Killam Memorial Emerging Leader Chair. The traditional Killam Memorial Chair focused on scholars in the sciences or engineering, but the new chair, intended to honour early-career scholars, is open to every discipline. The inaugural recipient, Dr. Melanie Noel, PhD, received her award in the spring.

The Killam Awards were established in 1965 by Dorothy J. Killam to honour her late husband, Izaak Walton Killam. They are Canada’s largest private endowment for higher education and recognize exceptional scholars at only five universities.

“The University of Calgary is honoured to be among such a select number of universities able to continue the Killam legacy with the Killam Awards,” said Dr. Ed McCauley, president and vice-chancellor. “And every year, I am taken with the extraordinary calibre of their recipients’ research and teaching. Their achievements are worthy of such a prestigious recognition and I congratulate them all.”

The recipient of the Killam Graduate Supervision and Mentorship Award, Dr. Jeff Dunn, PhD, of the Cumming School of Medicine, recalls a custodian enjoying his class. “I foster an idea generation culture,” he said. “We bandy ideas around like balls in a dodgeball game. I was amused when, during a planning session, a custodian was listening. They later approached me and said it sounded like an episode of the TV medical show House.”

Dr. Kathy McCoy, PhD, holder of the Killam Memorial Chair, explained that it will “provide me with the flexibility and security to perform exciting and innovative research over the next five years. I hope to explore new questions and generate preliminary data that can be leveraged to apply for additional funds to follow exciting discoveries.” She said it will help “address new research questions that are considered high-risk yet high-reward, for which traditional channels is more difficult to obtain.”

To learn more, please visit the Killam Trusts webpage. The full list of this year’s Killam Awards recipients is:

Killam Annual Professors:

• David Eaton, Faculty of Science (Geoscience)
• Carolyn Emery, Faculty of Kinesiology
• Nicole Letourneau, Faculty of Nursing
• Penny Pexman, Faculty of Arts (Psychology)
• Cora Voyageur, Faculty of Arts (Sociology)

Killam Research & Teaching Award winners:

• Killam Research Excellence Award: Herman Barkema, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine
• Killam Graduate Supervision and Mentorship Award: Jeff Dunn, Cumming School of Medicine (Radiology)
• McCaig-Killam Teaching Award: Kyla Flanagan, Faculty of Science (Biological Sciences)
• Killam Undergraduate Mentorship Award: Adam Murry, Faculty of Arts (Psychology)

Killam Emerging Research Leaders:

• Kirsten Fiest, Cumming School of Medicine
• Regine King, Faculty of Social Work
• Gregory Welch, Faculty of Science

First Year Pre-Doctoral Laureates

• Tiffany Anne Beks
• Elena Buliga
• Harrison Michael Campbell
• Ryan Crosschild
• Davor Curic
• Julie Deleemans
• Georgina Freeman
• Madisen Hvidberg
• Erin Calaine Inglis
• Sheliza Ladhani
• Zachary Arthur Moline
• Luiz Gustavo Nogueira de Almeida
• Mary Cecilia Porter
• Chene Royan Redwood
• Rahil Ghatreh Samani
• Abdullah Safa Soydan
• Rahil Ghatreh Samani
• Madisen Hvidberg
• Erin Calaine Inglis
• Sheliza Ladhani
• Jamie Aaron Stern Michaels 
• Maria Pavlova 
• Stephen Michael Jerome Pollo 
• Luis Felipe Ponce Alvarez
• Boglarka Soos
• Vishnu Vasanthan
• Katherine Margaret Webber 
• Gerardo Zegers  

Second Year Pre-Doctoral Laureates:

• Mohammadali Ahmadi 
• Galina Belolyubskaya
• Kathryn Marie Blair 
• Pablo Danilo Borja Padilla 
• Kristy Brown 
• James Kenneth Bull 
• Crystal Nicole Chokshi
• Meagan Nicole Cloutier 
• Ali Fatehi Hassanabad
• Milad Ahmadi Khoshooei
• Kaltrina Kusari
• Dusan Nikolic 
• Chelsea Veronique Moran
• Roberta Cabral Ramos Mota
• Emiko Joanne Muraki
• Oluwatomiwa Adedamola Osin
• Kelsey Ann Pennanen
• Abdullah Sarhan
• Mason Raymond Stothart
• Carieta Oniefa Thomas 
• Leah VanDyk
• Jared Thomas Voris

Killam Post-Doctoral Laureates:

• Abhijeet Alase
• Catriona Hippman
• Moossavi Shirin 

2020-2021 Killam Visiting Scholar:

• Richelle Allen-King (hosted by the Department of Geoscience in the Faculty of Science)