I’m pleased to inform you that Dr. David R. Hipfner will be joining the IRCM team as the head of an epithelial cell biology research unit.

Dr. Hipfner has a PhD from Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, where he completed his doctoral studies under Drs. Roger Deeley and Susan Cole. As a fellow with the Medical Research Council of Canada (now the Canadian Institutes of Health Research), he explored the signalling mechanisms related to growth and cancer.

He is currently a postdoctoral fellow with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, under the supervision of Dr. Stephen M. Cohen. His work has focused on the genetic approaches that have developed in fruit flies (Drosophila) and the study of the regulation of growth during development. His main fields of interest are the orchestration of the regulation of cell proliferation, cell survival and cellular architecture during tissue growth. Dr. Hipfner is a fellow at the European Molecular Biology Organization and is a past fellow of the Human Frontier Science Program. His leading-edge research into cell proliferation has been published in such prestigious scientific journals as Cell and Genes & Development.

Dr. Hipfner will pursue his work analyzing the significance of the ties between proliferation, apoptosis and cellular architecture during growth.

He will bring to the IRCM his invaluable expertise in cellular biology and molecular genetics, which will help to reinforce research into cancer and signalling. He will join us in the winter of 2006.

We are delighted to welcome him aboard.