DR. ARISTOTLE VOINESKOS Director Slaight Family Centre for Youth in Transition & Head Kimel Family Imaging-Genetics Lab, CAMH Canada Research Chair & Associate Professor of Psychiatry, University of Toronto
Years Active in the IMS: PhD: 2006 - 2010 Faculty: 2011 - Present
I was lucky enough to complete my PhD at the end of my residency program through the IMS. I was even luckier to have had extraordinary mentors who touched my trajectory directly and indirectly. Many of them are IMS faculty. Mary Seeman was a graduate coordinator when I started my PhD, and approved a flexibility of topic and training location that many others may have deemed too risky. I should also credit Trevor Young, our current Dean, who at the time also gave me the confidence to pursue my dreams. Somehow I was able to combine topics of genetics, brain imaging, aging, and schizophrenia into a coherent set of findings that has now become a topic of interest for our field. Jim Kennedy, Benoit Mulsant, and Bruce Pollock, all IMS Faculty locally, as well as Martha Shenton abroad, played crucial roles in those categories, and gave me the freedom to synthesize disciplines and ideas. In the end, I was fortunate enough to win the IMS Siminovitch-Salter Award presented annually to a graduating doctoral student who has made outstanding scholarly contributions. Thanks in large part to my training at the IMS, philanthropic support, and that of Catherine Zahn, the CAMH CEO, I initiated the first research-program at U of T and CAMH in brain imaging and genetics through the Koerner New Scientist Award and Kimel Family Translational Imaging-Genetics Lab, which I still run, and our theme is clinical neuroscience across the lifespan. Each day I try to pay this support forward, a) because it’s the right thing to do, and b) because it’s fun ! Amazing IMS students who have graduated, such as Daniel Felsky, Tris Lett, Saba Shahab, Laura Stefanik, and Tina Behdinan, and currently in my lab, such as Grace Jacobs, and Neda Rashidi, or who came following the IMS as post-docs (e.g. Anne Wheeler) have been a tremendous pleasure to support, have contributed to our discoveries in the lab,
have won their own awards, elevated their own career trajectories, and have been involved in the life of the IMS. There is nothing better than watching your students go on to do great things not just during their time in the lab, but also in their next career step, i.e after, they leave the lab. Thanks to our growth, discoveries, and successes, we have landed major grants each year from CIHR and the NIMH and built an international reputation. At a personal level I have been lucky enough to win a number of awards, such as the Polanyi Prize, a Canada Research Chair, the Rising Star Award from the Schizophrenia International Research Society, and most recently as one of Canada’s Top 40 Leaders Under 40.
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