Announcement: Inaugural Neil McKenzie Chair in Cardiac Care appointed
I am pleased to announce that Dr. Geoffrey Pickering has been appointed as the inaugural Neil McKenzie Chair in Cardiac Care at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, Western University, effective January 1, 2021 to December 31, 2025.
Dr. Pickering is a Professor in the Departments of Medicine, Biochemistry and Medical Biophysics at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry and a scientists at Robarts Research Institute. He earned his medical degree in 1983 at Queen's University and received fellowship certification in Internal Medicine and Cardiology in 1987 and 1989 respectively. Dr. Pickering also earned a PhD in Medical Biophysics at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry in 1990.
He subsequently undertook post-doctoral training in vascular biology at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts and assumed a faculty position at the institution.
Currently, Dr. Pickering is a Cardiologist at the London Health Sciences Centre. He is also the Director of the Molecular Medicine Research Laboratories at Robarts and currently serves as the Chair of the Cardiovascular Sciences panel at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Dr. Pickering was most recently the Heart & Stroke Foundation Barnett-Ivey Chair, and a member of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario board of directors from 2009-2017. He was inducted as a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences in 2018.
Dr. Pickering’s research is internationally recognized in the field of vascular cell biology and blood vessel restructuring. His research group has discovered novel genes and pathways that regulate vascular cell function in health and disease, with implications for vascular aging, vascular regeneration and the prevention of heart attacks and stroke.
Dr. Pickering is the recipient of a number of awards and honours, including a Career Investigator Award from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario from 1998-2010; a Dean’s Award of Excellence for Research in 2004; the Hypertension Canada Senior Investigator Award in 2013; the Ken Bowman Research Achievement Award from the University of Manitoba and an Alumni of Distinction Award from Schulich Medicine & Dentistry in 2016.
Please join me in congratulating Dr. Pickering on his appointment.
John Yoo, MD, FRCS(C), FACS
Dean, Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry
Western University
