Looking back: The Donnelly Centre celebrates 20th Anniversary with a day-long symposium
“A 20th anniversary is a rare opportunity to pause,” says Stephane Angers, Professor and Director of the Donnelly Centre. “In the daily rhythm of experiments, grants, papers, meetings, and deadlines, we don't always take time to appreciate what has been built here.”
On May 26th, over 200 members of the Donnelly Centre community came together for a day of celebration and reflection at the Hart House Great Hall.
Angers continues in his opening speech, “The Donnelly Centre has grown into a community with a distinctive culture—open, collaborative, rigorous, and unafraid to cross boundaries between fields. That culture is what we are celebrating today.”
It is a culture that has been building slowly for two decades. On November 5th, 2005, the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research officially opened its doors and welcomed world-renowned scientists to a new paradigm of collaboration and interdisciplinary research. It was a vision of the future that Leah Cowen, University of Toronto’s Vice-President of Research and Innovation, and Strategic Initiatives, recalls with pride.
“When the Donnelly Centre opened in 2005, it was built around a powerful vision that by bringing together biologists, engineers, and computational scientists, we could accelerate discoveries in entirely new ways,” Cowen says in her Welcome Address. “At the time, that vision was ambitious, even disruptive. Today it’s a proven model.”
The community heard from top scientists across various disciplines; mirroring the values of the Centre’s approach to research. With two plenary speakers, four alumni talks, and two presentations given by current Donnelly researchers, the schedule reflected the past, present, and future of biomolecular research at the Donnelly.
Plenary Speaker: Emma Lundberg, Associate Professor of Bioengineering and Pathology at Stanford University and a Professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
"Decoding human cell architecture – from spatial proteomics to cell modelling"
Plenary Speaker: Michael Snyder, Professor and Director of the Stanford Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine.
"Transforming Healthcare using Deep Data, Remote Monitoring and AI"
Alum Talk: Ylva Ivarsson, professor at Uppsala University.
"Toward Comprehensive Short Linear Motif Atlases of Human and Viral Proteomes"
Alum Talk: Jolanda van Leeuwen, Associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School.
"Genetic suppression: the wiring of biological resilience"
Alum Talk: Jüri Reimand, Principal Investigator at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research and Associate Professor at the University of Toronto.
"Drivers and passengers in the cancer genome"
Alum Talk: Samuel Lambert, Assistant Professor at the Victor Phillip Dahdaleh Heart and Lung Research Institute at the University of Cambridge.
"Molecules to health records: polygenic scores and predictions"
Donnelly Talk: Sridevi Venkatesan, postdoctoral neuroscientist at the Gillis Lab.
"A uniformly processed atlas of human brain development defines cell type-specific maturation trajectories across lifespan"
Donnelly Talk: Michael Costanzo, Senior Research Associate at the Boone-Andrews Lab.
"Mapping a genetic network for a human cell"
In addition to the talks, Donnelly Centre trainees had the opportunity to display their most recent work in the form of posters. During lunch and the post-symposium reception, a crowd flocked to Hart House’s East Common Room to view over forty posters put together by Donnelly trainees.
"Posters showcase the creativity, energy, and ambition of our trainees and research teams,” says Angers. “It reminds us that the future of the Donnelly Centre is already here.”
Over the course of the day, the focus shifts beyond the past two decades, as both speakers and attendees alike begin to discuss the years to come.
“As we celebrate twenty years,” Angers concludes, “I hope today will be an opportunity not only to look back with pride, but also to reconnect, to start new conversations, and to imagine together what the next twenty years of the Donnelly Centre can be.”
The Donnelly's 20th Anniversary was sponsored by Illumina and Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. We extend a huge 'thank you' to everyone who helped make this event a possibility—including but not limited to the organizing committee, the speakers, the volunteers, and everyone behind the scenes!
About the Donnelly Centre
The Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research is a research hub at the University of Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine, where scientists from diverse fields work together to advance medicine and health. Founded in 2005, the Donnelly Centre is a global leader in research on systems biology, regenerative medicine and disease modelling.
For more information about the Donnelly Centre, follow us on X, LinkedIn and Bluesky.
Media Contact
Kira Belaoussoff
Communications Coordinator at the Donnelly Centre
donnelly.communications@utoronto.ca
416-946-8253