TORONTO — A Toronto-based neurosurgeon who has deepened our understanding of brain tumours and a northern Ontario psychologist focused on Indigenous-led mental health care are among the winners of the prestigious Canada Gairdner Awards.A spokesperson for the Gairdner Foundation says the prize was introduced this year to address a gap in the awards landscape for mid-career scientists. Zadeh and Mushquash each win $50,000.
"When you begin to think about people as a sum of their physical and mental and emotional and spiritual selves in a broader, more holistic kind of way, it begins to open up a lot of potential for thinking about how to support people in a way that's much broader," said the 43-year-old Mushquash, who is Ojibway and a member of Pays Plat First Nation.
Five other innovators in the fields of artificial intelligence and microbiology each nabbed the annual international award, which bestow $100,000 to each winner for influential contributions to biomedical science. The three other winners are scientists Bonnie L. Bassler at Princeton University, E Peter Greenberg at the University of Washington and Michael R. Silverman, an emeritus investigator at The Agouron Institute.