Katherine Elvira

Katherine is the Canada Research Chair in Microfluidics for Drug Discovery and Health Care, a Michael Smith Health Research BC Scholar in partnership with the Canadians for Leading Edge Alzheimer Research (CLEAR) Foundation, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Victoria, Canada.

Katherine received her undergraduate integrated Bachelor's and Master’s degree in Chemistry from Imperial College London in 2007. She started working in the field of microfluidics during her PhD (2012, Imperial College London), by building digital microfluidic platforms to perform automated chemical reactions. Katherine then moved to ETH Zürich, Switzerland, working firstly as a Postdoctoral Researcher and then as a Senior Scientist in the Institute for Chemical and Bioengineering. During this time, Katherine developed a variety of microfluidic platforms for applications such as the quantification of lipid digestion, the safe generation of singlet oxygen for organic synthesis and the rapid determination of distribution coefficients.

Katherine’s group at the University of Victoria develops microfluidic (lab-on-a-chip) technologies to build bespoke artificial cells and tissues for drug discovery and development applications. Katherine is also honoured to have been awarded the 2023 Gilead Award for Excellence in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion by the Chemical Institute of Canada. She firmly believes that the challenges of the future will only be solved by harnessing the power of diverse researchers.