Executive Director

Stephen M. Robbins, PhD, is the Director of the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research (LDI) at the Jewish General Hospital, Glaxo Smith Kline Chair in Pharmacology and Professor in the Gerald Bronfman Department of Oncology at McGill University. In 2013 he was appointed as the Scientific Director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Institute of Cancer Research and has served two terms.

He completed his undergraduate degree at York University in 1985 and then completed his PhD in 1991 at the University of British Columbia in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. He obtained his passion for cancer research while pursuing his postdoctoral studies (1991-1996) under Nobel laureate, Dr. J. Michael Bishop at the University of California at San Francisco. He joined the University of Calgary in 1996 where he elevated to the rank of Professor in the Departments of Oncology and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He finished his final term as a Scientist of the Alberta Innovates Health Solutions (formerly known as the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research) and held a Canada Research Chair Tier 2 in Molecular Genetics of Cancer. From 2009-2013 he was the Director of the Southern Alberta Cancer Research Institute and was the Associate Director of Research for Alberta Health Services Cancer Care. In addition to serving as the Scientific Director of ICR, he is the current Chair of Governing Council for the International Agency for Research on Cancer (Lyon, France) and past Chair of the Canadian Cancer Research Alliance.

Professor Robbins has had a long-standing interest in understanding the biochemical circuitry that controls cellular proliferation and differentiation and how this circuitry goes awry in cancer. During his research career he has taken a more translational approach including defining new therapies for malaria, has discovered a novel class of anti-inflammatory agents, and identified new therapeutic targets for brain tumours. Recently a peptide that he and his colleagues discovered has moved to a Phase 2 clinical trial in hospitalized COVID-19 patients. In addition to maintaining a productive research program he is also committed to teaching and graduate education and has won several awards with respect to these activities.