The University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM) is a thriving campus, generating research discoveries, innovation, and new knowledge from an impressive breadth of fields and collaborations that bridge many disciplines. Over the past decade, we have grown into the second largest division at the University of Toronto, with 15 departments, three academic institutes, and 180 undergraduate and graduate programs. UTM is home to 1,200 continuing faculty, librarians, and staff, and more than 16,000 students. The leading faculty and outstanding staff and students at UTM contribute to U of T’s standing as one of the world’s top twenty universities, distinguished by our researchers’ unique range of expertise. U of T is one of eight universities — University of Oxford; University of Cambridge; Harvard University; University of California, Berkeley; Stanford University; University of California, Los Angeles; and the National University of Singapore are the others — to rank in the top 25 globally in 34 fields of research. We rank in the top fifty globally in 48 fields, more than any other university on earth.
Our research enterprise has been on a rapid rise; researchers continue to have high scholarly outputs and secure significant research funding each year, with grants supporting pioneering work in the humanities, natural and life sciences, and social sciences. In 2022 our scholars were awarded over $15 million in research funding, published more than 550 journal articles and over 10 books, and received several local and national honours. In addition, UTM is proud to have 13 Canada Research Chair holders. Strategic projects such as the Black Research Network, Critical Digital Humanities Initiative, Robotics Institute, Centre for Medicinal Chemistry, and Novo Nordisk Network for Healthy Populations empower our researchers and benefit the people, communities, and economies we serve. UTM also hosts a wide range of research programs that address regional and global research questions, from studying pressing environmental issues to developing a more holistic understanding of child development. Initiatives such as the Centre for Urban Environments; Centre for Child Development, Mental Health, and Policy; Centre for South Asian Critical Humanities; and the Centre for NonLinear Analysis & Modeling are sites of groundbreaking cross-disciplinary research and training. Furthermore, UTM is involved in a number of cross-divisional research initiatives, including the Data Science Institute, the Mobility Network, and the Climate Positive Energy Initiative. Then, there are the many dedicated researchers who are hard at work all across the UTM campus, conducting top-tier research in our labs, our libraries, and our communities.
The Office of the Vice-Principal, Research (OVPR) plays a foundational role in aiding research excellence by the way of state-of-the-art core facilities, internal funding programs, and staff and faculty expertise. Our mission is to provide a comprehensive suite of high-quality services, resources, and knowledge in support of this enterprise. I am confident that these investments and resources, coupled with the research infrastructure expansions taking place across our campus, will extend UTM’s leadership as a centre of creativity, discovery, and positive social change.
UTM’s Strategic Framework, launched in 2022, highlights the need to empower research discovery and impact. Its commitments — to attract, support, and retain world-leading researchers; to advance insight, innovation, creativity, and curiosity; and to catalyze research inquiry that enhances U of T’s reputation for inclusive excellence that benefits both the region and the world at large — have informed our work on campus and beyond. This Framework, which revolves around a focus on truth, openness, and reciprocity, has guided our strategic research planning, and we have benefitted from it and from plans across U of T’s tri-campus as we’ve worked to establish our own clear and actionable framework.
With our vision to support, promote, and inspire the research, scholarship, and creative activity of our community, and to enhance UTM’s research reputation and profile, I am pleased to launch the OVPR’s inaugural Strategic Framework. Though the OVPR is the hub for research support at UTM, our research enterprise touches every part of the campus. It informs the ideas we teach; the co-curricular opportunities we provide; the facilities we construct; the investments we make; the priorities we fundraise for; and the external relationships we build.
In the following pages, you’ll learn about our priorities and commitments, as well as our ambitious plans, which will not only help shape the OVPR’s path going forward but that of UTM as well.
G.W.K Moore, PhD
Vice-Principal, Research
Professor, Department of Chemical & Physical Sciences