James Woodgett

2018 – Awarded the Arthur Wynne Gold Medal by the Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences

Together with Professor Imogen Coe, the founding Dean of Science at Ryerson University, Woodgett co-organized a one-day conference, held at the end of May 2017 in Toronto, at which researchers came together to discuss, and to support the findings of the Naylor Report: Investing in Canada's Future – Strengthening the Foundations of Canadian Research.

When the CIHR proposed to change the way that it awarded research grants, including replacing the existing face-to-face peer reviews of grant applications with a virtual, anonymous review system, Woodgett wrote an open letter to Federal Health Minister Jane Philpott criticizing the changes. Within days more than 1,300 scientists and researchers had signed on to his letter. Woodgett subsequently met with Minister Philpott on July 13, 2016. While some plans were re-evaluated, Woodgett later told University Affairs magazine that with the next round of research applications looming, the CIHR grant system "is still a mess."

In June 2016, Dr. Kirsty Duncan, then Minister of Science in the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, commissioned a nine-member advisory panel, chaired by former president of the University of Toronto, Dr. David Naylor, to consult with Canada's research community and to report on the state of basic science and scholarly inquiry in Canada.

Jim Woodgett has (co-)authored over 300 peer-reviewed scientific research articles. In 2007, he was interviewed for the Question and Answer section of the journal Current Biology, about his research and thoughts on being a scientist.

James (Jim) Woodgett is a British-born biologist and the Principal Investigator of an active research laboratory at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Sinai Health System (formerly Mount Sinai Hospital), in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He was the Koffler Director of Research at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute from November 2005 to January 2021.

In 2005, Woodgett became Director of the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute. He is also a professor of medical biophysics at the University of Toronto.

2000 – Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in the field of Molecular Biology and Genetics

In 1992, Woodgett and his family emigrated to Canada from the United Kingdom. He worked at the Ontario Cancer Institute, based at Princess Margaret Hospital. His fellow researchers at the time included Tak Mak and Josef Penninger. Woodgett went on to be appointed head of the division of experimental therapeutics, and director of the Microarray Centre at University Health Network.

Woodgett studied biochemistry as an undergraduate at the University of York, before undertaking doctoral research at the University of Dundee, Scotland. He did post-doctoral research in Tony Hunter's group at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California. This was followed by five years (1987-1992) at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Middlesex, England, where he headed his own research laboratory.