UBC’s Office of the Vice-President, Research & Innovation recently announced 40 emerging and established research excellence clusters that will be supported with funding in 2022/23. Five of these Research Excellence Clusters are led by DMCBH researchers.

Established clusters:

Dynamic Brain Circuits in Health and Disease Research Excellence Cluster

The Dynamic Brain Circuits in Health and Disease cluster seeks mechanistic insight into normal and dysfunctional brain circuits across illnesses and injuries. We accelerate these insights by strengthening the collaborative research environment: through local and international workshops and courses, all faculty, staff, and trainees gain access to infrastructure and technology training in addressing questions around brain circuit function by embracing modern data-driven methodologies.

Cluster Lead: Timothy Murphy

Women’s Health Research Cluster

The Women’s Health Research Cluster is a network of women’s health researchers and stakeholders that are interested in how sex and gender play a role in health outcomes. We work towards creating a future where women can live equitably healthy lives by promoting, expanding, and catalyzing impactful research on women’s health.

Cluster Lead: Liisa Galea

 

Emerging Clusters:

Advancing Mental Health Equity in a post-COVID-19 Asia-Pacific

This emerging research cluster positions UBC as a centre of excellence in equity-oriented global mental health research focused on the Asia-Pacific region. The cluster brings together interdisciplinary researchers and stakeholders at UBC, in Canada, and internationally to collaborate on community-engaged research, innovative approaches to knowledge exchange and advancing best practices for equitable mental health, including via the use of digital technologies.

Cluster Lead: Raymond Lam

MATRIX-N: Multidisciplinary Alliance for Translational Research and Innovation in Neuropsychiatry

MATRIX-N seeks to bridge gaps between research, clinical practice, and patient needs to facilitate innovative solutions to global mental health challenges. The cluster will create new multidisciplinary collaborations between foundational and clinical researchers to increase the translational power of neuropsychiatry research into novel pharmacotherapies and ensure more cost-effective, clinically-relevant drug development processes.

Cluster Lead: Anthony Phillips

The Vision Research Cluster: From Molecules to Behavior to Society

Vision allows us to connect to each other, navigate the world and promote societal change.  The Vision Research Cluster is a network of vision and technical experts focused on new foundational discoveries to improve the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of eye and brain disorders by state-of-the-art methods in engineering, AI, neuroimaging, telemedicine, proteomics and super-resolution microscopy.

Cluster Lead: Joanne Matsubara