UBC Faculty of Medicine professor Dr. Connie Eaves is the recipient of a 2023 YWCA Women of Distinction award in the category of Research, the Sciences & Technology.
The annual awards, celebrating 40 years this year, honour individuals and organizations whose outstanding activities and achievements contribute to the well-being and future of our community.
Dr. Eaves is a Distinguished Scientist at the BC Cancer Research Centre, a UBC Professor of Medical Genetics and a world leader in cancer stem cell biology. She is best known for her discoveries of methods to detect and characterize blood and breast stem cells published in more than 500 papers in leading scientific journals.
In 1981, Dr. Eaves and her husband responded to a request from BC Cancer and UBC to create a new research group using a shared $1 million donation from the B.C. government in the name of Terry Fox, now with 40 years of sustained international recognition. An advocate and mentor for women, over half of the 107 postgraduate trainees she has supervised have been women, many of whom are now independent principal investigators in leading centres.