At a workshop in June 2021, when asked what UTM researchers should aim to achieve in the next ten years, one of our Departmental Chairs responded: “a cure for cancer.” The goal exemplifies a level of ambition prominent at UTM—and for good reason. Our researchers develop new treatments for rare diseases and chronic illnesses. Power socially responsible innovation and equitable criminal justice reform. Design robotic technologies and economic models for human flourishing. Promote Indigenous ways of knowing and lift up new voices. Create new arts and tell new stories about the global past.
UTM shares this knowledge openly, collaborating with local communities even as we extend U of T’s international research reach. Today, leveraging tri-campus partnerships and donor investments, UTM is improving diabetes care in Mississauga as a model for health equity globally. We’re supporting youth mental health with partners in Peel to share the same practices to help children thrive everywhere. And we’re promoting biodiversity and sustainability in Canada’s largest cities to do the same for other cities around the world.
This research also energizes the distinctiveness of our teaching. Students learn new knowledge directly from the researchers who discover it. And they participate in research inquiry themselves, carrying their discoveries from the classroom, Library, and lab into the workplace and world—including into global research and entrepreneurship networks across U of T and beyond. In it all, our students, staff, and faculty come together around a shared vision for this community: to provide a home where the best researchers in the world help make the world a better place.
Commitments
- Attract and support leading faculty, postdoctoral, and graduate student researchers.
- Enable disciplinary insight, interdisciplinary collaboration, and artistic creativity, curiosity, and critique.
- Champion research inquiry and partnerships that strengthen U of T’s commitment to inclusive excellence and deliver benefits regionally and globally.
Accountabilities
- Have we fostered a dynamic research environment, with administrative and infrastructural supports, that encourage our researchers’ diverse pursuits?
- Have we built rewarding collaborations among faculty, students, librarians, and research and core facilities staff at UTM and elsewhere at U of T?
- Have our research discoveries shaped academic inquiry, student teaching and learning, innovations in industry and entrepreneurship, and public discourse?
- Have we cultivated research partnerships that leverage the strengths of UTM’s unique location and of U of T’s tri-campus system?
- Does research at UTM address challenges of immediate and enduring relevance and help translate knowledge effectively for internal and external communities?