Suzanne Fortier
President
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
Ottawa, Ontario
Dr. Suzanne Fortier has served as President of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research
Council of Canada (NSERC) since January 2006.
Before her appointment to this position, Dr. Fortier held a number of senior academic and
administrative positions at Queen's University. She joined Queen's University in 1982, after
holding research positions at the Medical Foundation of Buffalo and the National Research Council
of Canada, and reached the rank of Full Professor in both the Department of Chemistry and the
School of Computing Science. She also served as Associate Dean and Acting Dean in the School of
Graduate Studies and Research and Acting Vice-Principal (Research) before being appointed
Vice-Principal (Research) from 1995 to 2000 and Vice-Principal (Academic) from 2000 to 2005.
Dr. Fortier is a crystallographer by training, specializing in the development of mathematical
and artificial intelligence methodologies for protein structure determination. She has also made
contributions to the development of novel techniques in crystallographic data mining to gain new
insights from the large and growing databases and correlate the structure of crystals to their
properties.
During her time as an active researcher, she was a member of the Protein Engineering Network
of Centres of Excellence (PENCE), the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems (IRIS)
and Communications and Information Technology Ontario (CITO). She has authored or co-authored
over 80 scientific publications and had made numerous invited presentations.
She has received the Clara Benson Award for distinguished contributions to chemistry by a
woman (1997), the Entrepreneurship Award from Communications and Information Technology
Ontario (1997) and the Queen's University Distinguished Service Award (2005).
Most recently, she received an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Thompson Rivers
University in British Columbia (June 2006). The degree recognized her combined scientific
achievements and administrative gifts, which reflect her lifelong commitment to the power of
learning as a means of enhancing quality of life.
Dr. Fortier served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Ontario Centres of Excellence Inc.,
the Board of Governors of the Royal Military College of Canada and the federal government's Council
of Science and Technology Advisors (CSTA). She is currently a member of the Ontario Task Force on
Competitiveness, Productivity and Economic Progress, and the Board of Directors of the Canada
Foundation for Innovation.
A frequent contributor to many NSERC committees as either member or chair, Dr. Fortier was
a member of NSERC's Council from 1996 to 2005. During this period, she also served a term
as Vice-President of Council (1997-2002).
A native of St-Timothée, Quebec, she attended McGill University,
where she received a BSc (1972) and a PhD in Crystallography (1976).
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