UBC Medicine researchers are among the recipients of new funding to address some of the world’s most complex and pressing health challenges through collaborative research clusters.
A total of 43 Research Excellence Clusters led by researchers at UBC Vancouver are being supported in 2026/27 through the Grants for Catalyzing Research Clusters (GCRC).
Research Excellence Clusters are networks of researchers addressing societal and cultural challenges that transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries. The clusters led by UBC Medicine researchers will address key health topics including cancer prevention, neurodevelopmental disabilities, public health policy and more.
The GCRC program was jointly created by the Office of the Vice-President, Research & Innovation and the Office of the Provost & Vice-President, Academic, UBC Vancouver.
UBC Medicine-led Research Excellence Clusters (2026/27)
Cancer is the leading cause of death in Canada. One in every two Canadians will receive a cancer diagnosis. Despite improvements in treatment, these trends will remain as the Canadian population grows and ages. Given the scale of the cancer burden, cancer control must move beyond treatment to emphasize prevention. The Cancer Prevention Research Cluster supports a network of researchers, practitioners, trainees, and collaborators to enhance the landscape of cancer prevention in BC and beyond; conducts interdisciplinary research, generates cancer prevention evidence, and moves evidence into policy and practice; and focuses cancer prevention research on priority populations to reduce cancer inequities.
Cluster Lead: Trevor Dummer (School of Population and Public Health)
CEREBRI is a research cluster comprised of multidisciplinary health professionals, clinician-scientists, health policy-makers, neuroscientists, UBC academic Faculty of Medicine Departments/Divisions, as well as patient and family partners who are collectively focused on improving the clinical outcomes of British Columbians with diseases emanating from cerebral ischemia. The cluster will focus its main research themes on creating new and novel projects that are based upon forging breakthroughs in the diagnosis, management and understanding of the pathophysiology of cerebral ischemia-based diseases in humans.
Cluster Lead: Mypinder Sekhon (Department of Medicine)
Vision is one of our most important senses, relying on the intricate interplay between the eye and the brain. Our Research Excellence Cluster in Vision unites a diverse community of vision and brain researchers, fostering new partnerships among experts, trainees, and individuals with lived experiences. Through collaboration, we aim to advance our understanding of visual function and improve the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of eye and brain disorders using cutting-edge methods in engineering, AI, imaging, proteomics, and super-resolution microscopy. Our goal is to lead an international network that drives innovation and collaboration in vision science.
Cluster Lead: Angie Ip (Department of Pediatrics)
New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) reduce reliance on animal testing while improving relevance to human health, offering transformative platforms for drug screening, disease modeling, and therapeutic discovery. Adoption remains limited due to fragmented expertise, lack of standards, and restricted access. The CONNECT cluster (Collaborative Organ-on-Chip Network for Next-Generation Engineering and Cellular Technology) will unite biomedical engineers, researchers, clinicians, and industry to build shared resources, workflows, and training. Focusing on organoids, organs-on-chip, and advanced biodevices, CONNECT will expand feasibility, accelerate innovation, and establish guidelines for integration with AI and digital twins -positioning UBC as a global leader in NAM-driven precision health.
Cluster Co-leads: Govind Kaigala, Sarah Hedtrich & Megan Levings (School of Biomedical Engineering)
The AI revolution is unfolding before our eyes! Our interdisciplinary team is bridging advances in mathematics and computer science with real-world challenges in public health. We are developing innovative ways to uncover cause-and-effect relationships between genetic, lifestyle, and environmental forces that have traditionally been studied in isolation. Our work focuses on six themes: identifying causal relationships in complex health datasets, constructing causal graphs from existing research, improving nutrition policy, reducing disparities in healthcare, enhancing drug safety, and personalizing patient care decisions. By collaborating across disciplines, we aim to build strong, lasting international partnerships that will shape health policy and practice.
Cluster Lead: Boris Sobolev (School of Population and Public Health)
Children who are d/Deaf and/or Hard of Hearing (DHH) are at increased risk for life-long language difficulties, yet research focusing on Canadian who are DHH remains limited. The Research Cluster brings together researchers from the Department of Linguistics, Department of Special Education, Department of Otolaryngology, the School of Population and Public Health, and the School of Audiology and Speech Sciences. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, the Cluster aims to strengthen members’ individual and collective research programs with the long-term goal of improving language and communication outcomes for children who are DHH.
Cluster Lead: Douglas Sladen (School of Audiology and Speech Sciences)
SYNERGY — Synthetic Chemistry, Automation, and AI for Cancer Biology is a UBC research cluster accelerating how new molecules are discovered to understand and combat cancer. By combining laboratory robotics, artificial intelligence, and cancer biology, the team creates faster, adaptive cycles of design, synthesis, and testing that learn from each round of experiments. In addition to advancing cancer research, SYNERGY trains the next generation of interdisciplinary scientists and develops shared discovery approaches that can be adopted by partners across British Columbia and beyond, helping to strengthen molecular research capacity regionally and nationally.
Cluster Lead: Corey Stephenson (Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology)