Complete scholars: Four exceptional faculty members named Distinguished University Professors

“Four highly accomplished faculty members have been named Distinguished University Professors in recognition of their achievements in scholarship, teaching and service. Lehana Thabane, Parminder Raina, Megan Brickley and Hendrik Poinar earned the university’s highest honour for faculty members, conferred on “complete scholars” for outstanding and sustained research with international impact, excellence in teaching and learning and a history of service with an impact on the community. Lehana Thabane | Faculty of Health Sciences Thabane, renowned for his accomplishments in deepening and expanding clinical research, built the methodological and ethical foundations of evidence-based work underway worldwide. He has reshaped clinical trials and medical practice, educated new generations of researchers, and strengthened the principles of scientific integrity and ethical accountability. Thabane wrote the definitive framework for early-phase trial design, a methodological guide that has been cited more than 3,800 times and accessed more than 300,000 times to date. He founded the first journal dedicated to pilot and feasibility studies and developed internationally endorsed and adopted standards for the design and reporting of clinical trials. He was the lead statistician for the globally recognized TOGETHER Trial, a six-country platform evaluating repurposed COVID-19 therapies, which informed international treatment guidelines, and led two major population-health studies that further demonstrate teh measurable societal benefit born of methodological innovation. Thabane has more than 1,200 peer-reviewed papers, over 83,000 citations, contributions informing over 1,200 policy documents and has supported 300 studies, and has held several prominent leadership roles in international organizations that shape health methodology, clinical trials and research integrity. At the same time, he has mentored, taught and guided thousands of learners, supervised more than 200 graduate students and strengthened research inclusivity, credibility and integrity. Parminder Raina | Faculty of Health Sciences An internationally renowned scholar and epidemiologist, Raina is known for his groundbreaking work in longitudinal studies and evidence synthesis, and his pivotal contributions to advancing the science of aging. Raina is lead principal investigator of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging, used by more than 700 research teams in Canada and around the world, resulting in more than 500 peer-reviewed publications. Raina himself has published more than 300 peer-reviewed papers and monographs, receiving more than 30,000 citations, with a scientific citation rate in the field of aging that is almost 20 times higher than the average global citation rate. His scholarship focuses on substantive and methodological areas of research in aging In establishing and leading the McMaster Institute for Research on Aging, with its emphasis on interdisciplinary research and the use of design thinking principles, Raina has led initiatives to address complex issues of mobility, the aging brain, and chronic pain in older populations. Raina is also a founding member of the McMaster Optimal Aging Portal, a globally trusted, evidenced-based information tool curated for public consumption with nearly 5 million users. Raina was founding director of the MIRA | Dixon Hall (DH) Centre, an innovative partnership between a multi-service agency and an interdisciplinary research institute known for bringing researchers, stakeholders, and end-users together to generate real-world research approaches that benefit older adults. Raina serves on a World Health Organization (WHO) expert committee, and his research has been a critical resource for the Public Health Agency of Canada, Health Canada and Economic and Social Development Canada (ESDC). He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, a Member of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Megan Brickley | Faculty of Social Sciences Brickley, a professor of Anthropology and the former Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in the Bioarchaeology of Human Disease (2010-2024), is being recognized for her pioneering contributions to the field of paleopathology, including her innovative research on metabolic bone diseases and bone trauma in archaeological human remains. Brickley is globally known for leading the largest paleopathological investigation to date, comprising 3,500 skeletons from Western Europe. In 2023, the City of Guelph acknowledged her expertise by inviting her to lead initiatives concerning the individuals buried at the public burial ground in Guelph, Ontario. Brickley’s pioneering research on individuals buried in the 18th and 19th-centuries has substantially enriched our understanding of historical communities. Her groundbreaking contributions highlight the limitations of contemporary texts in capturing the full complexity of the past. Brickley’s award-winning work firmly established consideration of metabolic diseases as a key aspect of understanding life in past communities in Europe, as well as for early European settlers in Canada. Brickley’s U.K.-based research helped implement diagnostic criteria for vitamin D deficiency in bone, setting an international standard for recording these conditions in academic work and CRM projects. Brickley’s work on work on identifying anemia in archaeological human remains is widely regarded as exceptional and ground-breaking. She was recognized in 2018 by her international peers for her exceptional research contributions and leadership in advancing the science of biological anthropology by the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology (Service Award). She was the first recipient of this prestigious award. She played a key role in founding the International Journal of Paleopathology in 2011, which brings together research from commercial organizations, museums and academic departments in the humanities, social, earth, biological, medical, radiation and veterinary sciences. In 2021 she was elected President (2021-23) of the Paleopathology Association by her peers. Brickley has published 86 peer-reviewed articles and 23 book chapters, co-authored 10 books, and given 50+ invited talks, with five keynote addresses spanning three continents and over 150 peer-reviewed presentations. At McMaster, she has succeeded in creating a rich training environment that attracts, develops and retains excellent students and trainees. To date, she has supervised 13 completed Masters with thesis and four completed PhDs. In addition to her undergraduate teaching, Brickley has secured four Undergraduate Student Research Awards (USRA), supervised three undergraduate students undertaking an Independent Study, and routinely encourages undergraduate students to assist with research projects in her lab. Hendrik Poinar | Faculty of Social Sciences Poinar, who reconstructed the genomes of the pathogens responsible for the Black Death and Plague of Justinian, is considered the founder of ancient pathogenomics. He is an internationally recognized expert on ancient DNA analysis and the first to successfully adapt Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) for use on fossil extracts, ushering in the field of paleo genomics. The Michael G. DeGroote Chair in Genetic Anthropology, Poinar is a world-renowned evolutionary geneticist specializing in ancient DNA, with hugely impactful contributions to academia, public and social health. Poinar is an interdisciplinary scientist with training in evolutionary genetics, biochemistry, molecular biology, molecular anthropology and genomics. His career has focused on uncovering minute traces of organic molecules in museum collections, fossils and sediments. He has developed and employed novel strategies to access ancient genomic material to reconstruct deep evolutionary histories. Poinar has characterized how DNA and protein are preserved. He pioneered chemical and molecular methods to access those molecules, and his work has made it possible to answer previously unanswerable questions about the past. After groundbreaking work on the Black Death and the Plague of Justinian, Poinar’s team is focused on exploring the burden of infectious disease across space and time, reconstructing of an ancient cholera genome from the 1849 epidemic, the first complete ancient smallpox genome and recalibrating the clock on the emergence of malaria. Poinar and his team found that roughly a teaspoon of cave sediments could identify at least 75 per cent of the animals that had frequented a cave for over 40,000 years. It took paleontologists 20 years of excavations and several metric tons of sediment to determine the same thing. The work highlighted the tremendous potential of sedimentary DNA. As a result, the field has exploded with its own journals and hundreds of papers from researchers worldwide being published on DNA from both modern and ancient sediments. Using the methods developed for the capture of DNA, Poinar’s lab reconstructed diverse floral, faunal and microbial diversity across major glacial and interglacial cycles in the past, specifically at extinction horizons. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Poinar Lab, along with his colleagues, pivoted to rapid screening for CoV in the saliva from long-term-care workers in the GTA. Using extremely sensitive methods developed in the lab, and an app, they were able to process saliva samples and have the results back to LTC nurses in two hours. This was far quicker, more sensitive and reliable than a lot of the provincial testing, which required nasal or throat swabs. In the past two decades, Poinar has supervised/co-supervised a total of 23 undergraduates, 28 MSc and MA students, 25 PhD students and six postdoctoral fellows. Poinar’s students have also been extremely successful, receiving numerous prestigious fellowships. Three undergraduate students in his group have received NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Awards over the last two summers. Poinar has published 145 peer-reviewed articles and 23 book chapters and given over 30 invited talks and over 100 peer-reviewed presentations. He has more than 23,000 citations on Google Scholar. Poinar’s achievements and contributions to public and societal health have been recognized by many institutions over the years, including: EMBO Fellow 2001, Petro-Canada Young Scholar 2003, SSHRC Meritorious New Scholar 2005, Premiers Research Excellence Award 2005, Tier II Canada Research Chair, Fellow of the Royal Society 2024, and the Royal Society of Canada’s John William Dawson Medal. The post Complete scholars: Four exceptional faculty members named Distinguished University Professors appeared first on McMaster News .

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