Endel Tulving joined Baycrest’s Rotman Research Institute in 1992 after a distinguished career as a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. Born in Estonia in 1927, Dr. Tulving immigrated to Canada in 1949. He received an undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Toronto and a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from Harvard University. Dr. Tulving became the inaugural Anne and Max Tannenbaum Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience, and conducted some of the first studies that used brain imaging to identify the neural basis of “episodic memory,” a form of remembering that Dr. Tulving famously referred to as “mental time travel.” Dr. Tulving’s contributions to psychology, cognitive neuroscience and the study of human memory earned him numerous awards, including his election as Officer of the Order of Canada (2006), the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame (2007) and the National Academy of Sciences (1988), to name a few.
Carol Greenwood
Carol Greenwood joined Baycrest as a scientist at the Kunin-Lunenfeld Applied Research Unit (KLARU) in 1994, and from 2002 was a senior scientist at KLARU, where she was the Director. She then joined the Rotman Research Institute in 2011 as a senior scientist. Born in Montreal in 1952, Dr. Greenwood received her bachelor’s degree in food science from McGill, before receiving a Ph.D. in nutrition from the University of Toronto and served as the president of the Canadian Society for Nutritional Sciences from 2006 to 2008. Dr. Greenwood’s work examined the links between diet, physiology, cognition and dementia, and nutrition strategies for brain health, in work spanning basic (rodent) research to cognitive neuroscience and applied intervention research. This work helped pave the way for the evidence-based
Brain Health Food Guide.
Terence “Terry” Picton
Terence Picton was born in England in 1945 and emigrated to Canada in 1956. He studied medicine at the University of Toronto, where he became interested in the brain. He received a Ph.D. at the University of California at San Diego, where he became a pioneering researcher in electroencephalography (“brain waves”) and conducted seminal studies on human attention and audition. He returned to Canada in 1974 and spent 20 years in the Department of Medicine in Ottawa, before moving in 1994 to a full-time research position at the Rotman Research Institute, where he continued his research in hearing and cognition. Dr. Picton became the Anne and Max Tannenbaum Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience in 1997, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2006.
Donald Stuss
The late Donald Stuss was born in 1941, in Sudbury, Ontario, and grew up in Kitchener-Waterloo. After graduating from high school, he entered a monastery run by the Basilian Fathers in Mundare, Alberta. After six years of study and contemplation, he decided that he was better suited to a more active life and studied philosophy at the University of Ottawa. After several years of teaching, he then returned to obtain his doctorate in psychology with Terence Picton at the University of Ottawa. In 1986, in collaboration with Dr. Frank Benson, Dr. Stuss co-authored
The Frontal Lobes, a highly influential book examining the neuropsychology and function of the frontal lobes. In 1989, he moved to Toronto to direct the new Rotman Research Institute (RRI) to investigate the cerebral basis of executive functions, attention, memory and their disorders. After retiring as director of the RRI in 2010, he was the founding president of the Ontario Brain Institute from 2011 to 2016. He was inducted to the Order of Ontario in 2001 and as an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2017.
Gordon Winocur
Born in Winnipeg in 1941, Dr. Winocur completed his BA and MA at the University of Manitoba before completing his Ph.D. at the University of Waterloo. He then returned to the Prairies, where he was an assistant and then associate professor at the University of Saskatchewan, before returning to Ontario to take up a position as Professor at Trent University, and then later also at the University of Toronto. Dr. Winocur joined the Rotman Research Institute as a senior scientist in 1991, where he later served as acting director and vice president of research at Baycrest. He was also the scientific director of the Alzheimer Society of Canada from 2001-2003. Dr. Winocur’s research, much of it carried out with his close collaborator and friend Dr. Morris Moscovitch, has significantly influenced scientists’ views of how the brain encodes, consolidates and retrieves memories. Many awards, including the Donald O. Hebb Distinguished Contribution Award in 2017, have been bestowed upon Dr. Winocur in recognition of his substantial career, which included advancing our understanding of the neural bases of memory and confirming the adverse effects of chemotherapeutic drugs on cognitive function in cancer patients (“chemobrain”).
Elsa Marziali
Elsa Marziali was born in 1935 in St. Marys, Ontario, and obtained her Master of Social Work degree from the University of Ottawa and Ph.D. from Smith College School for Social Work in Massachusetts. She taught clinical social work in Canada and Italy before joining the University of Toronto, where she became a professor in the Faculty of Social Work and the Faculty of Medicine Department of Psychiatry. Her research focused on evaluating the efficacy of psychotherapy models. Dr. Marziali retired from her faculty positions in 2000, when she joined Baycrest as the Schipper Chair in Gerontological Social Work Research and as a senior scientist at the Kunen-Lunenfeld Applied Research Unit. While at Baycrest, Dr. Marziali developed innovative online video conferencing programs for family caregivers of people with dementia, and for people living with chronic metabolic disease who were challenged in adopting healthy lifestyle behaviours (exercise and diet). This work significantly predated and contributed to the current development of virtual healthcare delivery systems.