Research Excellence Clusters Funded in 2026/27

The Accelerating Research Interdisciplinarity in Sustainable Electricity (ARISE) cluster is positioned at the convergence of technical and socioeconomic approaches for decarbonization. It emphasizes a holistic approach across three research themes: i) advancing forecasting, control, and decision-making techniques to enable clean electric grids, ii) pioneering methods to limit electricity consumption by ever-more-pervasive computing systems, and iii) developing policy instruments to incentivize the sustainable energy transition. Our vision is an interdisciplinary research cluster among engineering, science, and social science that will catalyze student training, industry practice, and public policy aimed at economy-wide decarbonization, proliferation of artificial intelligence, and an equitable energy transition.

Cluster Lead: Y. Christine Chen
 

Since our inception in 2025, The Autoimmune Biomedical Collaborative (ABC) has facilitated connections between basic biomedical researchers and clinicians to identify commonalities across autoimmune diseases, develop potential therapeutic strategies, and facilitate innovative solutions to global autoimmune disease health challenges. Our mission is to leverage the varied expertise of Canadian and international cluster members to forge new multidisciplinary collaborations that generate fresh ideas and foundational experiments in biomedical research. These efforts will solidify bridges between basic scientists, clinical investigators and patient partners, translating the power of collaborative research into novel therapeutics and preventative strategies.

Cluster Co-leads: Marc Horwitz, Kelly Brown, May Choi, Laura Evgin, Lisa Osborne & Maria Tokuyama

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Cancer is the leading cause of death in Canada and most common in older adults, but the complex management and survivorship needs of older adults and their caregivers is often hindered by siloes between cancer services, primary care, and community supports. We will bring together UBC experts alongside, national, and international leaders in cancer, primary care, geriatrics, community services, and those with lived experience to co-create evidence and advance supports for older adults with cancer and caregivers. Ultimately, our research will transform care and create knowledge products to support the delivery of services for older adults with cancer in Canada.

Cluster Lead: Kristen Haase

Cancer is the leading cause of death in Canada. One in every two Canadians will receive a cancer diagnosis. Despite improvements in treatment, these trends will remain as the Canadian population grows and ages. Given the scale of the cancer burden, cancer control must move beyond treatment to emphasize prevention. The Cancer Prevention Research Cluster supports a network of researchers, practitioners, trainees, and collaborators to enhance the landscape of cancer prevention in BC and beyond; conducts interdisciplinary research, generates cancer prevention evidence, and moves evidence into policy and practice; and focuses cancer prevention research on priority populations to reduce cancer inequities.

Cluster Lead: Trevor Dummer

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The expansion of anti-queer and anti-trans legislation and the resurgence of reactionary politics have rendered queer and trans life increasingly precarious. Yet, queer and trans artists continue to generate aesthetic, embodied, and narrative practices to both resist contemporary forms of state violence, and insist on imagining and building alternative modes of relation, belonging, and futurity. This cluster brings together faculty, graduate students, and community-based artists working across the humanities, social sciences, and creative arts to center these practices as more than just artistic outputs, to study them as methods of thought, forms of collective learning, and infrastructures of survival.

Cluster Co-leads: Jasbir Puar & Ervin Malakaj
 

CEREBRI is a research cluster comprised of multidisciplinary health professionals, clinician-scientists, health policy-makers, neuroscientists, UBC academic Faculty of Medicine Departments/Divisions, as well as patient and family partners who are collectively focused on improving the clinical outcomes of British Columbians with diseases emanating from cerebral ischemia. The cluster will focus its main research themes on creating new and novel projects that are based upon forging breakthroughs in the diagnosis, management and understanding of the pathophysiology of cerebral ischemia-based diseases in humans.

Cluster Lead: Mypinder Sekhon

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Developing advanced materials is essential to enable future technological changes across many sectors: electronics, bio-technologies, and health. To achieve this, it is critical to characterize how the structure and chemistry of materials influence functional properties and performance. This cluster draws expertise from across distinct fields in UBC, with a shared mission of advancing and deploying materials characterization. Members of the cluster lead state-of-the-art instrument facilities, develop characterization techniques, and collaborate to deliver quantitative insights into materials processing and performance. By linking expertise and building community in the field of materials characterization, UBC is positioned to discover the materials of tomorrow.

Cluster Lead: Ben Britton

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The UBC Centre for Innovation in Responsible Chemistry (CIRC) unites academic researchers and industrial scientists across chemistry, engineering, forestry, and environmental sciences using interdisciplinary and systems thinking approaches to drive innovations that are grounded in the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry. Trainees and research groups, in collaboration with industrial scientists, will consider existing operations, economic, regulatory, and societal factors while developing innovative chemical processes and materials that minimize waste, conserve resources, and eliminate hazardous substances from molecular design through to industrial application. CIRC will be a hub that expedites knowledge translation for the mining, forestry and biotechnology/biomanufacturing industries of BC.

Cluster Lead: Laurel Schafer
 

Vision is one of our most important senses, relying on the intricate interplay between the eye and the brain. Our Research Excellence Cluster in Vision unites a diverse community of vision and brain researchers, fostering new partnerships among experts, trainees, and individuals with lived experiences. Through collaboration, we aim to advance our understanding of visual function and improve the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of eye and brain disorders using cutting-edge methods in engineering, AI, imaging, proteomics, and super-resolution microscopy. Our goal is to lead an international network that drives innovation and collaboration in vision science.

Cluster Lead: Joanne Matsubara

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Our research cluster works to create healthier communities and ecosystems by using nature-based solutions (NbS)—actions like restoring wetlands, planting trees, and diversifying farms—to tackle challenges such as flooding, heat, wildfire and wildlife conflict. Building on past successes in sustainable agriculture and human–wildlife coexistence, we’re adding an urban focus to connect farms, forests, and cities under a One Health approach, which links human, animal, and environmental well-being. Over the next two years, we’ll partner with communities in British Columbia and beyond to test and monitor NbS, share knowledge nationally and internationally, and help shape policies that support people and biodiversity.

Cluster Lead: Claire Kremen

The Community-Driven Youth Neurodevelopmental Health Equity Cluster brings together researchers, clinicians, community partners, and families to address systemic barriers faced by children and youth with neurodevelopmental disabilities. By centering lived experience and community priorities, the cluster aims to co-create and implement innovative and equitable approaches to health, education, and social participation for families navigating neurodevelopmental disability.

Cluster Lead: Angie Ip

New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) reduce reliance on animal testing while improving relevance to human health, offering transformative platforms for drug screening, disease modeling, and therapeutic discovery. Adoption remains limited due to fragmented expertise, lack of standards, and restricted access. The CONNECT cluster (Collaborative Organ-on-Chip Network for Next-Generation Engineering and Cellular Technology) will unite biomedical engineers, researchers, clinicians, and industry to build shared resources, workflows, and training. Focusing on organoids, organs-on-chip, and advanced biodevices, CONNECT will expand feasibility, accelerate innovation, and establish guidelines for integration with AI and digital twins -positioning UBC as a global leader in NAM-driven precision health.

Cluster Co-leads: Govind Kaigala, Sarah Hedtrich & Megan Levings
 

The CODED cluster brings together a multi-disciplinary integrated group of researchers, clinicians, and educators to advance knowledge around rare disorders that affect oral health. The cluster has national outreach and aims at providing an integrated approach for improving diagnosis, treatment, and development of novel preventive interventions for disorders and syndromes of the craniofacial and oral complex, including the dentition. The cluster will focus on three core activities to integrate dentistry with the rare disease community, and the medical community at large, with the aim to develop national expertise in rare diseases, raise awareness, and advance integration and diagnostics through research.

Cluster Lead: Daniel Graf

Critical Image Forum (CIF) is an interdisciplinary research cluster that focuses on the political, ethical, aesthetic and social dimensions of photography, image archives, and expanded documentary practices. CIF’s research outcomes are concerned with photographic literacy and pedagogy, as well as with supporting interdisciplinary research/creation for faculty and student members, and community researchers. We partner with local, regional, and national organizations to support collaborative projects and public programming. Our 2026-2028 course of research focuses on critical approaches to image archives, collections and networks.

Cluster Co-leads: Althea Thauberger & Kelly McCormick

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The AI revolution is unfolding before our eyes! Our interdisciplinary team is bridging advances in mathematics and computer science with real-world challenges in public health. We are developing innovative ways to uncover cause-and-effect relationships between genetic, lifestyle, and environmental forces that have traditionally been studied in isolation. Our work focuses on six themes: identifying causal relationships in complex health datasets, constructing causal graphs from existing research, improving nutrition policy, reducing disparities in healthcare, enhancing drug safety, and personalizing patient care decisions. By collaborating across disciplines, we aim to build strong, lasting international partnerships that will shape health policy and practice.

Cluster Lead: Boris Sobolev
 

Photochemistry is an extremely powerful method that can be used as a sustainable energy source for the chemical synthesis of pharmaceuticals, water purification and photodynamic therapy. This cluster aims to drive new interdisciplinary research innovations and exploit opportunities to train the next generation of chemists, materials and biomedical scientists and engineers in applications of photochemistry and photomedicine.

Cluster Lead: Michael Wolf

The cluster, Living Our Indigenous Languages: In Relation, With Land and Water, Through Inquiry and Collective Strengths, helps Indigenous and non-dominant peoples drive language research for themselves and develops robust accountability systems for community-controlled education. Cluster members ground their research in local epistemologies, broaden global Indigenous and non-dominant peoples' participation in research, and work with the appropriate authorities toward transformative practice. This work aligns the tri-agency strategic plan Setting New Directions to Support Indigenous research and research training in Canada with Canada’s National Action Plan, the International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022-2032) Global Action Plan, and UBC Campus Vision 2050.

Cluster Co-leads: Joseph Dupris, Candace Galla & Johanna Sam

Children who are d/Deaf and/or Hard of Hearing (DHH) are at increased risk for life-long language difficulties, yet research focusing on Canadian who are DHH remains limited. The Research Cluster brings together researchers from the Department of Linguistics, Department of Special Education, Department of Otolaryngology, the School of Population and Public Health, and the School of Audiology and Speech Sciences. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, the Cluster aims to strengthen members’ individual and collective research programs with the long-term goal of improving language and communication outcomes for children who are DHH.

Cluster Lead: Douglas Sladen

As Canada’s largest health workforce, nurses are at the centre of growing concerns about unsafe and inequitable working conditions, fueling a nation-wide healthcare crisis. To meet Canadians’ rising healthcare demands, optimizing nurse retention is imperative. This cluster brings together an exceptional interdisciplinary team spanning nursing, electrical and computer engineering, economics, and operations research—disciplines that rarely intersect, yet whose integration is essential for addressing the nursing workforce crisis. By combining these perspectives, our cluster pioneers a new field of study focused on retaining Canada’s largest health workforce – its nurses.

Cluster Lead: Farinaz Havaei

Sovereignty is an increasingly urgent topic in our current moment. It is striking that concepts and practices of sovereignty are being broadly reconfigured as groups of scholars, journalists, and members of the public have started to place it at the centre of how they understand the contemporary world. At UBC, many scholars research aspects of sovereignty, but have not engaged with each other. This cluster brings together UBC scholars from multiple disciplines to discuss digital, cultural, and territorial sovereignty. Revisiting and re-imagining sovereignty is crucial as this scholarship can have significant and near-term impact for the present.

Cluster Co-leads: Katherine Bowers & Heidi Tworek

SYNERGY — Synthetic Chemistry, Automation, and AI for Cancer Biology is a UBC research cluster accelerating how new molecules are discovered to understand and combat cancer. By combining laboratory robotics, artificial intelligence, and cancer biology, the team creates faster, adaptive cycles of design, synthesis, and testing that learn from each round of experiments. In addition to advancing cancer research, SYNERGY trains the next generation of interdisciplinary scientists and develops shared discovery approaches that can be adopted by partners across British Columbia and beyond, helping to strengthen molecular research capacity regionally and nationally.

Cluster Lead: Corey Stephenson

This project seeks to establish a structure at UBC for critical engagement with Black Studies as an intellectual, political, and cultural project using the specific location of the Black Pacific -- that is, the geography of Black Vancouver and British Columbia -- as crossroads for global Black intellectual life. Through a set of campus and community events, including a series of workshops, monthly community “Saturday Schools,” public lectures, print publication projects, and arts-based performances and exhibits, we aim to interrogate the conceptual and epistemological foundations of Black studies in a global context, sharing research priorities and pedagogical strategies.

Cluster Lead: Jemima Pierre

Despite experiencing inequitable impacts, many Indigenous people and communities have thrived during the health emergencies by returning to traditional cultural practices and ways of being. Health research often ignores these strengths and misses opportunities to equip Indigenous communities for health emergencies like pandemics. The best way to prepare Indigenous communities for health emergencies is to help them thrive in their daily lives. This means ensuring the resources and supports for Indigenous people are in place. Our Indigenous-led research cluster pursues this goal by investing in partnerships and networks with Indigenous scholars and communities.

Cluster Lead: Kimberly Huyser

Everyday experiences, from vaccine efficacy to air quality, arise from molecular interactions, yet we observe only the end of multi-step sequences. High-resolution microscopy can capture single-molecule and single-cell events, track their dynamics, and identify critical points where intervention matters. However, the experimental search space is far too large to explore manually. This Cluster focuses on coupling advanced microscopy-driven analytics with AI-enabled self-driving laboratories that automatically plan, run, and learn from experiments. We will unite UBC researchers in biophysics, chemistry, mathematics, biotechnology, and computer science. Our impact will be to accelerate discovery and translation in nanomedicines, bioproducts, and carbon-based materials.

Cluster Co-leads: Sabrina Leslie & Xin Tang

The cluster will build an interdisciplinary research and action hub of UBC faculty and staff across career stages to advance understanding of how extreme heat and air quality affect health and well-being. Through collaboration across housing, mental health, migration contexts, and policy-making to name a few, the cluster will foster community-engaged research and generate equitable, innovative, and community-informed solutions for climate resilience.

Cluster Lead: Liv Yoon

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing agriculture. Our research cluster brings together diverse areas of expertise to provide a platform for collaboration among researchers and industry with a common interest in wine production and climate change. Over the past two years, our cluster has synergized with the British Columbia, Ontario and Californian wine industries to identify critical concerns due to the impact of climate change. We have developed research goals, and built grant proposals with novel strategies and research plans to mitigate the effects of climate change on viticulture, wine fermentation and the sustainability of wine tourism.

Cluster Co-leads: Vivien Measday & Simone Castellarin

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Our vision is to develop an interdisciplinary research agenda among clinical, social and epidemiologic scientists that will catalyze research, research training, practice and policy aimed at promoting physiologic birth. The long-term goal of our network will be to develop a Canadian Institute of Normal Birth Research.

Cluster Lead: Patti Janssen

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Many patients have trouble getting health services when needed. Long waits in emergency rooms or closures in rural communities are examples. Doctors seeing patients over videoconferencing or using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help patients make health decisions are becoming popular “Digital Health” (DH) options, but are DH services really helpful and safe for patients? Will they help relieve overcrowding or increase doctors’ availability?

The AI and Technology-Enabled Care Collaboration Centre (AiTECCC) is a group of researchers, government and community members, health professionals, and technology experts. AiTECCC works together to discover how DH can be helpful to patients and healthcare. 

Cluster Lead: Kendall Ho

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We propose "The Canadian English Word Centre" as the focal point for the study, monitoring and production of reference tools for Canadian English lexis, phraseology and semantics. After the devastation of the commercial dictionary industry at the beginning of the millennium, there is a growing research gap today. Our aim is to provide Canadian residents and anyone interested (e.g. students, academics, writers and editors) with a reliable suite of reference works that is Canadian (not American or British) and that reflects the multiplying uses of the many Englishes in Canada, informing non-discriminatory recommendations of an inclusive standard, rooted in decolonization.

Cluster Lead: Stefan Dollinger

Cinema Thinks The World is a large-scale cluster that will bring together numerous scholars on and with film and other audiovisual media at UBC. It will offer up a series of scholarly and public-facing events, including in partnership with the Cinematheque. It aims to hold a symposium and a conference on its chief themes of de-westernising and decolonising film studies, including via the production of non-traditional academic outputs, specifically audiovisual work. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the cluster aims to work towards several successful SSHRC and other grant proposals. 

Cluster Lead: William Brown

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This emerging interdisciplinary cluster, of applied science, creative arts and humanities scholars, works on the complex problems of sustainability in textiles and clothing. The breadth of our research and creation informs our cluster name: Circular Textiles includes creative production and technologies using biodegradable materials or textile waste; Sustainable Fibre addresses fabric-making traditions, traditional ecological knowledge and regenerative food-and-fibre systems; and Slow Fashion aims to motivate changed consumption habits and reduce garment waste. Research methods include technical and creative experimentation, modeling, and cultural and historical research. Our annual public Slow Fashion Season events will inspire, inform, and exchange knowledge. 

Cluster Lead: Germaine Koh

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This Research Cluster (RC) is organized around research on identifying climate change disinformation (through both traditional social science methods, and newly emerging computational means), and developing strategies to counter obstruction of climate action.
A central goal of this initiative is to establish this research excellence cluster as a knowledge hub, and scholarly network, equipped to engage with the public, and help key communities address the challenge of climate disinformation and obstruction. In this context we will develop a network of scholars with complementary strength, and pursue research external funding from Tri-Council agencies, government, and private sources.

Cluster Lead: David Tindall

The Centre for Asian Canadian Research Engagement (ACRE) cluster will respond to ongoing issues facing diverse Asian Canadian communities, particularly the pervasiveness of anti-Asian racism which became very public during the pandemic. As a multi-disciplinary team of researchers, staff, and community knowledge bearers, we want to better understand and engage with the changing demographics of Asian Canadian communities, while highlighting the differential impacts of anti-Asian racism on these communities. We will explore how Asian Canadian communities can be represented and represent themselves through new approaches to archival collection, collaboration, digital preservation, and impactful distribution of public education.

Cluster Lead: Henry Yu

The cluster will bring together UBC faculty members from four academic units at both UBC campuses (Art History, Visual Art & Theory, Anthropology, School of Music, Creative and Critical Studies), curators from UBC cultural units (Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Museum of Anthropology, UBCO Gallery, Indigenous Art Intensive), and students across units in the Faculty of Arts and beyond, as well as engage local, national, and international arts and cultural ecologies to collaborate on projects and programs related to curatorial studies and research.

Cluster Co-leads: Erin Silver & Melanie O'Brian

The Data4Nature cluster brings together expertise at the interface of ecology, data science, synthesis statistics and data governance to develop new methods and provide local to global leadership in the growing field of ecoinformatics. We will leverage the power of new technologies to detect change in species and ecosystems, and seek to integrate existing streams of ecological data into a province-wide observation network that respects Indigenous data sovereignty. Such large amounts of integrated data will enable us to work with multi-sectoral partners to co-develop models of ecological change for societal good.

Cluster Lead: Diane Srivastava

This research cluster explores the complex meanings, responsibilities, and potentialities of being Indigenous and “out of place,” or living beyond one’s traditional ancestral lands. Drawing upon the field of trans-Indigenous methodologies as a means for co-creation of knowledge, Indigenous faculty who have recently arrived at UBC, recruited with the development of UBC’s commitment to UNDRIP and the creation of the ISP, will work together and with First Nations and Indigenous partners, including xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, səlilwətaɬ and urban communities, to develop trans-Indigenous partnership, direct research potentials, and establish and meet responsibilities to our Nations and to each other. 

Cluster Lead: Kristen Barnett

This cluster connects scholars from across Arts and Forestry whose research engages with landscapes in Latin America and the Caribbean. Our workshops, speaker series, and “multiplier” grants will centre the question of extractivism and its impact on Latin American societies, Indigenous Peoples, and the environment. As a returning cluster, we seek to solidify research relationships and target our activities to pull in SSHRC funding (at least $1 million), create a Centre for Latin American Studies at UBC, create Mitacs fellowships, and recruit postdoctoral researchers. Building on past success (2023-25) we will actively involve PhD students as researchers and workshop coordinators. 

Cluster Lead: Benjamin Bryce

We will develop a community of practice bringing together diverse faculty from Science, Applied Science, Architecture, and Land and Food Systems to explore development of living hybrid materials made from synthetic microbial communities including microalgae and fungi, with applications related to sustainable construction, waste treatment, and food security. These materials will enable the creation of carbon positive value cycles across industrial sectors including manufacturing and agriculture and provide a transdisciplinary research, teaching, and training ecosystem at the interface of microbial ecology, biological engineering, and sustainability science.

Cluster Lead: Steven Hallam

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We seek to trace, affirm, nourish and expand connections between UBC and the Pacific Islands. Our network has three purposes: to identify and bring together researchers at UBC whose heritage and/ or work is connected to the Pacific region; to gain better understanding of Pacific presence in UBC/ Vancouver/ BC (including Pacific presence in museum collections); and to actively participate in broader conversations about the Pacific especially in Vancouver, BC, and the longer west coast. Underpinning all activities is an awareness of the specific place (Musqueam) from which we look towards the vast Pacific Islands region.

Cluster Co-leads: Alice Te Punga Somerville & Mitiana Arbon

PREVENT-AMR is an inter-disciplinary research cluster with the ultimate goal of providing a research framework to address the global challenge of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) through prevention. Our cluster integrates human, animal, and environmental perspectives, and considers this issue from the perspectives of health, economics and climate change. Our cluster emphasizes cutting-edge research, partnerships, and education to mitigate the spread of resistant pathogens, safeguard public health, and promote sustainable ecosystems. Grounded in equity, diversity, and inclusivity principles, PREVENT-AMR aims to advance high impact solutions while training the next generation of leaders in AMR and One Health research. 

Cluster Lead: Manish Sadarangani

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Streets provide the connective tissue for cities, providing mobility and access, distributing goods and utilities, and opportunities for social and civic interaction. Rethinking the Right-of-Way (ReROW) is focused on innovation in the design and management of streets, sidewalks, alleys, and other public spaces that lead to better social, health, and sustainable outcomes. With respect to the ROW, the cluster will focus on three research themes and the connections between them:

1. mobility and access;
2. energy and the environment;
3. health and wellbeing.

Cluster Lead: Kelly Clifton

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The Smart Infrastructure and Construction Research Cluster (SICRC) is dedicated to developing cutting-edge structural and construction technologies, and creating efficient and cost-effective solutions for civil infrastructure. This multidisciplinary research cluster consists of expertise from material and structural engineering, robotics, computer science, construction management and infrastructure planning from both UBCV and UBCO campuses, in collaboration with leading industry partners and international experts, to address multiple challenging issues including the significant housing crisis, labor shortage, and global warming effects in North America and worldwide.

Cluster Lead: Tony Yang

Overdose is now the leading cause of death for youth in British Columbia, and of increasing concern nationally and internationally.

Our cluster unites an interdisciplinary team of world-leading experts dedicated to overdose prevention. Guided by principles of community trust and meaningful engagement, we collaborate closely with Youth and Family Advisory Councils, as well as Indigenous Elders and Cultural Facilitators, ensuring our work is informed by lived experiences and cultural wisdom. We work together, and create new evidence and innovative knowledge products towards our mission of ending youth overdose deaths. 

Cluster Lead: Matthew Carwana

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