Molly Shoichet, PhD, O.C., O. Ont., FRS

University Professor and Michael E. Charles Chair in Chemical Engineering; Associate Chair, Graduate Studies, Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry, Donnelly Centre, University of Toronto

Professor Molly Shoichet is University Professor, a distinction held by less than 2% of the faculty, at the University of Toronto. She served as Ontario’s first Chief Scientist in 2018 where she worked to enhance the culture of science. Dr. Shoichet has published over 650 papers, patents and abstracts and has given over 420 lectures worldwide. She currently leads a laboratory of 30 and has graduated 220 researchers. Her research is focused on drug and cell delivery strategies in the central nervous system (brain, spinal cord, retina) and 3D hydrogel culture systems to model cancer. Dr. Shoichet co-founded four spin-off companies, is actively engaged in translational research and science outreach. Dr. Shoichet is the recipient of many prestigious distinctions and the only person to be inducted into all three of Canada’s National Academies of Science of the Royal Society of Canada, Engineering and Health Sciences. In 2018, Professor Shoichet was inducted as an Officer of the Order of Canada and in 2011, she was awarded the Order of Ontario. Dr. Shoichet was the L’Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science Laureate for North America in 2015, elected Foreign Member of the US National Academy of Engineering in 2016, won the Killam Prize in Engineering in 2017 and elected to the Royal Society (UK) in 2019. In 2020, Dr. Shoichet was awarded the NSERC Herzberg Gold Medal and won the Margolese National Brain Disorders Prize. Dr. Shoichet received her SB from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1987) and her PhD from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in Polymer Science and Engineering (1992).