Research focus: Canadian history and, most recently, the history of medicine. Currently writing a biography of Harvey Cushing and the rise of neurosurgery.

What attracted you to this career?
I drifted a bit when I was young. After my undergraduate years at U of T, I taught high school for a few years, then I went back to university when I realized I wanted to be a professor and, especially, a publishing professor. I wanted to go as far as I could as an active scholar - writing, researching, publishing, teaching. And that's been my career.

What keeps you interested?
As a researcher, I keep coming back to being able to satisfy my curiosity. Plus, I am a compulsive writer and I'm not happy unless I'm working on a book. I hope I'll be finishing my last book on the day I die. Writing books, learning more, that is what life is about to me.

Likes and dislikes?
I've been enormously privileged to have this freedom to satisfy my curiosity. The only thing I don't like doing is applying for grants, so I have always worked with spartan needs. Some of my books I have financed out of my royalties. To me, time is more important than money. When I started in the '60s, it was easier than it is for young people today. There are better research opportunities now, things like postdocs that didn't exist when I started. But the competition today is more intense, as are the pressures to perform. The bar has been raised.

High point?
It's intensely exciting when you publish a book. It's like the birth of a child. And the research experience itself is very exciting when you make discoveries. That was particularly the case with The Discovery of Insulin and I found so many documents that were startling in their revelations. These experiences more than make up for the long, tedious days in archives where you push yourself to the point where your mind is just swimming with details and you're in some godforsaken city and then go back to a lonely hotel room. Readers' feedback from my books, the sense that the books just don't disappear into an academic black hole, is also a constant pleasure.

Cheryl Regehr
Professor, Social Work
PhD, U of T, 1996

Research focus: Studying victims' reactions to traumatic experiences, such as rape or airline disasters.

What attracted you to this career?
I earned my Masters in Social Work then worked as a social worker for 15 years. I was working as the director of a sexual assault centre and seeing a lot of young children who had been assaulted by somebody who had not been a family member - babysitter, hockey coach, those types of people. I realized that a lot of the kids were getting better, but the parents were not. I started writing down my ideas to help the parents. This study was published in an international journal and I realized I had something to offer. That led me to working on my PhD and a research career.

What keeps you interested?
There are so many vistas out there. Opportunities keep coming up and every opportunity creates new work. Every time I have a new contact, I realize there's something interesting I haven't done before.

Likes and dislikes?
I love research - this idea of putting concepts together to understand why things work or don't work. The trauma work is particularly exciting because it's
rewarding to see people get better. And in this field, you can actually influence social policy. The difficult part is that this job never ends. I work evenings and weekends all the time. When I was a social worker and a manager, when I left at the end of the day, I left the job behind. Now I never do. It's hard to balance this with my family.

High point?
Every high point becomes a starting point for the next thing I'm going to do. Last year, I met a trauma expert from Japan and it got me thinking about culture and trauma - for instance, the Jewish response to the Holocaust, or the Japanese response to World War II. This has opened up a new chapter of research for me.

What attracted you to this career?
I always loved math and science and I had some very good teachers who made me think I would like to go further in these fields. When I went to U of T and read my first textbook on animal behaviour, I couldn't sleep that night, I was so excited. I liked the creativity of it, that you could design experiments, carry them out, and find out an answer. I also found that I liked teaching. This career combines both.

What keeps you interested?
The scientific questions, thinking about approaches to solving problems. With each sabbatical, I get trained in something new, because with each step we take in our research, I've had to look into a new field. This constant process of learning keeps me fresh and interested. I have always felt that being a professor is the ideal career for me. I plan on doing this for the rest of my life.

Likes and dislikes?
My biggest joy is the joy of discovery. And I love working with my graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. Watching them develop is very rewarding. The hard part is finding the money required for molecular biological research, which can be very costly.

High point?
First and foremost are the times we've had major breakthroughs, such as when my first PhD student called me at 3 a.m. to say that we had located the first gene for normal individual differences in behaviour in any organism. Being recognized for your work is also gratifying. I was extremely honoured to be named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1998.

Frances Skinner
Assistant Professor, Medicine (Neurology), Physiology and Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, U of T Scientist, Toronto Western Research Institute; PhD, U of T, 1992

Research focus: The development of mathematical/engineering models that contribute to a fundamental understanding of biological systems.

What attracted you to this career?
I've always loved math. I also liked biology in high school and I planned to become a veterinarian. I had even applied to the University of Guelph for veterinary school when someone from Waterloo came and convinced me there would be many different options in math. So I took math at Waterloo. I heard of people doing biomedical research at U of T and realized that I could combine my love of biology with math. My research is based on mathematical models, so I'm still following the two subjects I love, math and biology.

What keeps you interested?
The intense stimulation that comes from this work. I wish I could just shut myself in a room and learn new things. We work on problems related to the brain and nervous system, which are hard problems. When you're working on particular problems, it gives you an excuse to learn new things. You never know everything.

Likes and dislikes?
I love the learning I can do. The hard part is not being able to pursue everything that interests me now. Being a parent and a researcher are both full-time jobs. I always wanted to have children, since both family and scientific research are a requirement for me. However, it means that I'm continually prioritizing. I don't want to miss my daughter's concert, but I have to get that grant done too. This life is complicated, but it's wonderful, too.

High point?
At a neuroscience conference recently, I was directed to work done by some other researchers who had used some work I had done on how animals coordinate their limbs as a foundation or starting point for their work. To me, that felt very good because I felt that I had made a contribution that people are building on.

Doug D. Perovic
Professor, Materials Science
and Engineering
PhD, U of T, 1990

Research focus: Scanning/transmission electron microscopy, interfacial structure and properties, mechanical properties, nanostructured materials for electronic, photonic, biomedical and structural applications, microelectronics assembly and packaging.

What attracted you to this career?
I have a competitive nature. My turning point was Grade 13. I was training to go to the '84 Olympics in hurdling, but a knee injury wiped out my hopes for the Olympics. So I applied myself more in my academic work and realized I could compete in a different way. After my second undergraduate year at U of T, the chair hired me to do some research as a summer student. I read a research article written by a famous group in Europe, and I began to get the feeling that these guys were wrong in their criticism of earlier research work published by my supervisors. So I wrote a paper that countered their contention. I loved the competition.

What keeps you interested?
In academic research, there are no boundaries. You can go as far as your energy and ability will take you. I like to work at the limits. I thrive on the pressure and intensity of research.

Likes and dislikes?
I love the impact your research can make. But the real high for me is seeing students who go on to be leaders. I'd like to see more funding become available in Canada for blue-sky research that is less restrictive. Industrial sponsorships are great, especially in this discipline. But the greatest discoveries in science were things that people weren't formally chasing.

High point?
In 1997, I developed an electron microscopy technique to map impurity atoms in semiconductor nanostructures and devices. It was well received and I was invited to be on the international advisory board of a symposium at Cambridge University to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the discovery of the electron by J.J. Thompson. To be asked to speak alongside my idols in this field was a tremendous honour.

Amira Klip
Professor, Paediatrics, Biochemistry and Physiology, U of T
Senior Scientist, The Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute
PhD, 1976, Center for Research and Advanced Studies, National Polytechnical Institute, Mexico City

Research focus: Regulation of glucose transport in skeletal muscle by insulin and defects in diabetes.

What attracted you to this career?
In high school in Mexico City, I became fascinated by chemical reactions and figured I would pursue a career as a chemist. A friend introduced me to a biochemistry program, which is the discipline I chose for my PhD. Years later, when I was working in fundamental research on glucose transporters at Sick Kids, I was asked to speak at the Toronto Diabetes Association Day and met a group of bright clinical researchers. We began to work together. I became more clinically aware and it was a real eye-opener that organizations such as U of T and Sick Kids could provide this cross-hybridization.

What keeps you interested?
It's the constant excitement of posing questions and then finding answers.

Likes and dislikes?
I really like training the next generation. You also make great friendships with researchers around the world. There is a healthy competition between us all, but you also meet and interact with very creative and interesting people.
It's a fascinating life, but you give up a lot of freedom in terms of leisure hours. What you achieve is immediately in the past, then you go on to try to discover something else, to go to a deeper level.

High point?
One of the best rewards is those students who've moved on to being postdocs and then succeeded in some way. And the discoveries. I've had a few in the past 10 years where I thought, "We had no inkling we were going to find this." It was not the obvious next step, but we found it and contributed something. That's a good feeling.

Robert Birgeneau
Professor, Physics
PhD, Yale University, 1966

Research Focus: Understanding the fundamental properties of condensed matter using neutron and x-ray spectroscopy.

What attracted you to this career?
Oddly, I never really intended to pursue a scientific career. I did well in sciences in high school and university, but I was not aiming towards a career in research. I thought about going to graduate school in physics, but I also thought it might be more interesting and challenging to go to business school to study operations research. Then I had a summer assignment at the Chalk River Nuclear Station, where I had the good fortune to work with a world-class physics group. We were able to carry out an experiment that turned out to be quite important and I discovered how rewarding research could be. So I went off to graduate school in physics realizing that I could work on problems that had challenged people for centuries.

What keeps you interested?
The fact that there are always more fundamental and challenging problems to solve. The great thing about science is that you advance to a point where you think that you've reached maturity in a field. But then you discover that there is a whole other layer of complexity and depth that you never imagined.
Likes and dislikes?
I love research. But I also like using different aspects of my personality that are not essential to carrying out research. That is one of the reasons why I have moved into administrative positions. But I'll always be a research scientist and educator. Some people play chess for a hobby. I do research.

High point?
The moment of discovery, when you've made a breakthrough. There's an exhilaration that comes with that which has no equivalent in human experience.
Also, the graduate students. If anybody looks back at my career 50 years from now, some might remember I was the president or the dean, but they are most likely to remember that I had educated a cadre of graduate students who became world-class scientists. That's a legacy that I am very proud of. It has been a great privilege to be able to play a role in launching the careers of a large number of extraordinarily accomplished researchers and educators.

Ping-Chun Hsiung
Professor, Sociology,
U of T at Scarborough
PhD, University of California,
Los Angeles, 1991

Research focus: The formation, dynamic, and perpetuation of power struggles underlying various cultural, national, and racial/ethnic boundaries in the global context.

What attracted you to this career?
I didn't start out to be an academic. I simply moved along step-by-step. Much of my inspiration comes from my parents, who value education more than anything else. I was able to acquire higher education because my father treasures his daughters as much as his sons, and my mother believes that her daughters are not inferior to anyone's son. Many of my childhood girlfriends, who were extremely gifted, were not as lucky as I was. This gives me a sense of mission for what I'm doing.

What keeps you interested?
I enjoy every breakthrough I have made along the way. It gives me a sense of accomplishment and purpose in life. Besides, the work itself is extremely fascinating. Both the known and unknown compel me to move forward.

Likes and dislikes?
I respect those before me who were willing to take risks and who have made a difference. The sense of being part of a large community keeps me going and gives me hope.
Intellectually, the biggest challenge for me is to remain critical as well as appreciative of various cultural, political, and economic systems in a post-colonial era when tension and dialogue of multiple positions are juxtaposed. It's also not easy to find a balance between academic research and community activism. Personally, the challenge right now is to combine an academic career with motherhood. I wish I had 48 hours in a day.

High point?
I have travelled a long way, with incremental steps and progress made along the way. It's hard for me to identify any one high point. More work is ahead.
I look forward to moving into areas I have just begun to explore.