Dr. Peter Zandstra
Vice-President, Research & Innovation
Office of the Vice-President, Research and Innovation
Dr. Peter Zandstra started in the role of Vice-President, Research & Innovation on June 1, 2026.
Dr. Zandstra graduated with a B.Eng. degree from McGill University in Chemical Engineering, obtained his Ph.D. degree from the University of British Columbia in Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, and continued his research training as a postdoctoral fellow in Bioengineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
After holding senior academic and research leadership positions at the University of Toronto, in July 2017, Dr. Zandstra joined the University of British Columbia as the founding director of the School of Biomedical Engineering (SBME), and as the director of the Michael Smith Laboratories. In these roles he has built programs that apply technological innovation to biology and help to train the next generation of biotechnology leaders. Under Dr. Zandstra's leadership of SMBE, 2025 saw the opening of the Gordon B. Shrum Building as the first custom-built biomedical engineering facility in Canada.
Dr. Zandstra’s research has advanced both the fundamental understanding of, and translational applications in, regenerative medicine. It focuses on understanding how functional tissue forms from stem cells, and how this information can be applied to design novel therapeutic technologies based on living cells. In addition to his academic roles, Dr. Zandstra has been involved in founding a number of biotechnology companies, including ExCellThera and Notch Therapeutics.
He is the recipient of a number of awards and fellowships, including the Premier's Research Excellence Award (2002), the E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship (2006), the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2007), the Till and McCulloch Award (2013) and the national Killam Prize in Engineering (2025). Dr. Zandstra is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (Engineering), the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2021 Dr. Zandstra was appointed to the Order of Canada for his significant contributions to stem cell bioengineering and regenerative medicine.
Read about the appointment of Dr. Zandstra as Vice-President, Research & Innovation
