By Amarpreet Grewal

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) provides funding for Biomedical, Clinical, Health Systems Services and Social, Cultural, Environment and Population Health research.

This year, UBC has received a total of twenty two highly prestigious Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarship awards and three of those were awarded to the graduate students from the Centre for Blood Research. A CIHR Fellowship that recognizes outstanding postdoctoral fellows was received by the CBR graduate, Dustin King.

Congratulations to the four CBR members on their CIHR awards:

	James Baylis, a PhD Candidate in Christian Kastrup’s lab, has received a Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarship for his research entitled ‘Treating fibrinolysis in postpartum haemorrhage with a self-propelling particle containing tranexamic acid’. Baylis characterized a self-propelling drug delivery system capable of penetrating deep into the wound site read more here.
	Steve Woosuk Hur, also a PhD Candidate in Dr. Kastrup’s lab, received Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarship for his research on ‘Mechanism Regulating Coagulation Factor Xllla and its Impact on Intracranial Hemorrhage and Thrombolysis’.
	John Andrew Alexander, a PhD Student in Natalie Strynadka’s laboratory, gained the Doctoral Research Award in a priority area of Infection and Immunity for his work entitled ‘Trouncing the superbug: the biophysical characterization of proteins involved in methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) antibiotic resistance’.
	Dr. Dustin King, has recently obtained his Phd from Dr. Strynadka’s laboratory, for which he received the 2016 Governor General’s Gold Medal. Now he is a postdoctoral fellow at Simon Fraser University and he was recently awarded the CIHR Fellowship for young investigators to pursue his work in ‘Elucidating the Effect of O-GlcNAc Modification on Protein Thermostability”.