Thank you very much.
Good afternoon, everyone.
I would like to thank you on behalf of the members of the Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences for inviting me to speak before this committee. Many of our members have been at the forefront of the response to COVID-19, and we welcome the opportunity to speak to our experience.
Good afternoon.
Thank you for the invitation to appear before the committee today to speak about Canada's response to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Our members have been at the forefront of the response. We welcome the opportunity to speak about our experience this afternoon.
I am a molecular biologist and biochemist by training. I am also a professor at the Université de Montréal and an adjunct professor at McGill University. I have a lab with graduate students, post-docs, and so on. I work on the biology of blood cells and leukemia and lymphoma. I was also president of my own institution and scientific director for over a decade, so I have experience in science administration.
I'm also president of the Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences. Again, I'm honoured to be here on behalf of our members. The society was founded in 1957, and recruits researchers and professors, mostly from university and research centres involved in biochemistry, cell biology, molecular biology and genetics. We are the group that does the investigator-driven research in the labs all over the country. This laboratory work is mostly basic and fundamental research that generates the knowledge that fuels innovation and trains the next generation of scientists.
We have a four-part mission. We want to promote biomolecular sciences. We would like to foster our younger colleagues, the trainees, the graduate students and the early career researchers. We organize scientific meetings with international visibility and give younger scientists the opportunity to speak and to make their science known. We support the implementation of EDI principles—equity, diversity and inclusion—in academic institutions. We have a strong willingness to do advocacy for science and research towards the federal government. Of course, we support a strong scientific and health research community in Canada and would like to ensure that Canada remains a world leader in innovation and scientific discoveries.
Most of what we know about viruses—how a virus enters the cells, docks into the cells, goes into the cells and replicates all the enzymes and proteins that play into the mechanisms—comes from basic research and fundamental research over many, many years. I have done a Ph.D. thesis on the—