Speaker: Professor Molly Shoichet, PhD, O.C., O.Ont., FRS, University of Toronto
Talk: Invention to Innovation: from what if to clinical trials
In research, we wonder, we re-examine dogma, we ask the “what if?” questions that lead to new insights and discoveries.
In business, we look for gaps, unsolved problems and intentionally develop solutions that fill a market need.
In this seminar, Professor Shoichet will discuss both approaches in three stories and highlight how a series of “I wonder if?” questions led us to design a completely new way for target discovery and drug screening in cancer.
Professor Shoichet will show how our new way to deliver therapeutics locally to the spinal cord and brain led to the invention of a new biomaterial that we have now tested clinically, and describe how we purposely designed a new vitreous substitute to overcome an unmet need and our path to translation.
Acknowledgements: The Shoichet Lab is grateful to have the opportunity to advance knowledge with exceptional researchers and collaborators and with the support of funding agencies: NSERC, CIHR, Medicine by Design-CFREF, Mend the Gap-NFRF, Krembil Foundation, US DoD, ISRT, Stem Cell Network, among others.
This seminar forms part of the Department of Chemical Engineering’s annual Distinguished Seminar Series 2026, and is open to departmental staff and PhD students only. If you are a member of the Imperial community and would like to attend, please reach out to Navta Hussain in the first instance.
Professor Molly Shoichet
Professor Molly Shoichet is University Professor, a distinction held by less than 2% of the faculty. She is the inaugural Pamela & Paul Austin Chair in Precision and Regenerative Medicine, and Scientific Director of Precision Medicine (PRiME) and BioHubNet at the University of Toronto. Shoichet served as Ontario’s first Chief Scientist in 2018 where she worked to enhance the culture of science. Dr. Shoichet has published over 850 papers, patents and abstracts and has given nearly 600 lectures worldwide. She currently leads a laboratory of 30 and has graduated 305 researchers. Her research is focused on drug and cell delivery strategies in the central nervous system (brain, spinal cord, retina), 3D hydrogel culture systems to model cancer and colloidal drug aggregates.
Dr. Shoichet co-founded four spin-off companies, is actively engaged in translational research and science outreach. Dr. Shoichet is the recipient of many prestigious distinctions and the first (and until recently the only) person to be inducted into all three of Canada’s National Academies of Science of the Royal Society of Canada, Engineering and Health Sciences. Professor Shoichet is an Officer of the Order of Canada and holds the Order of Ontario. Dr. Shoichet is the L’Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science Laureate for North America, 2015, Foreign Member of the US National Academy of Engineering, Fellow of the US National Academy of Inventors, recipient of the Killam Prize in Engineering, 2017 and Fellow of the Royal Society (UK). Dr. Shoichet is the NSERC Herzberg Gold Medal awardee, 2020 (the highest award in science/engineering in Canada) and recipient of the Margolese National Brain Disorders Prize. Dr. Shoichet received her SB from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1987) and her PhD from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in Polymer Science and Engineering (1992).