James R. Woodgett

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.

Woodgett's research spans the fields of Signal Transduction, Cancer Stem Cells, Diabetes, and Neurological Disorders. He is known for his co-discoveries of the molecules PKB/Akt and SAPK/JNKs, which have central roles in the evolution of cancer. Woodgett is also an authority on the functions of the GSK-3 genes, which play significant roles in insulin/diabetes and brain development/Alzheimer's disease, as well as bipolar disorder. He is known for his science communication and public science outreach, as well as his support for Women in STEM and early career researchers.

Biography Jim Woodgett was born in Leicestershire in the United Kingdom, He grew up in the village of Quorn. He did post-doctoral research in Tony Hunter's group at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California. Woodgett went on to be appointed head of the division of experimental therapeutics, and director of the Microarray Centre at University Health Network.

Research Jim Woodgett has (co-)authored over 300 peer-reviewed scientific research articles. 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." the findings of the Naylor Report: Investing in Canada's Future – Strengthening the Foundations of Canadian Research.

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.

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

Selected bibliography John M Kyriakis, Papia Banerjee, Eleni Nikolakaki, Tianang Dai, Elizabeth A Rubie, Mir F Ahmad, Joseph Avruch, James R Woodgett (1994) The stress-activated protein kinase subfamily of c-Jun kinases. Nature 369 (6476): 156–160 Qi-Long Ying, Jason Wray, Jennifer Nichols, Laura Batlle-Morera, Bradley Doble, James Woodgett, Philip Cohen, Austin Smith (2008) The ground state of embryonic stem cell self-renewal. Nature 453 (7194): 519–523