Brenda Andrews

Dr. Brenda Andrews is Professor and Chair of the Banting & Best Department of Medical Research within the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. She is also Director of the Terrence Donnelly Center for Cellular and Biomolecular Research, a new interdisciplinary research institute with the mandate to create a research environment that encourages integration of biology, computer science, engineering and chemistry and that spans leading areas of biomedical research.

After receiving her PhD in Medical Biophysics from the University of Toronto, Dr. Andrews obtained her early training in yeast genetics with the late Dr. Ira Herskowitz at the University of California San Francisco. In 1991, Dr. Andrews was recruited to the Department of Medical Genetics (now Medical Genetics & Microbiology) at the University of Toronto. She became Chair of the Department in 1999, a position she held for 5 years before assuming her current positions. Dr. Andrews' current research interests include mechanisms of cell cycle control and the regulation of cell cycle-dependent transcription, cyclin-dependent protein kinase (Cdk) specificity and function, regulation of cell polarity and morphogenesis. Dr. Andrews is also involved in a number of yeast functional genomics projects and is working with colleagues on a large collaborative project to build a yeast genetic interaction map. Her research is currently funded by the CIHR, the National Cancer Institute of Canada and Genome Canada (Ontario Genomics Institute).