Congratulations to Professor Katherine Ryan for being the 2026 winner of the Bernard Belleau Award. The Bernard Belleau Award is presented to a scientist residing in Canada who has made a distinguished contribution to the field of medicinal chemistry through research involving biochemical or organic chemical mechanisms.
Dr. Ryan established her own research group in the Department of Chemistry at the University of British Columbia in 2011 and is currently a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Biosynthetic Enzymes. Her research is focused on the biosynthesis of natural products, with a focus on pathway elucidation, enzyme mechanisms, and genome-mining. Her group has made advances in elucidating the biosynthetic origins of unusual functional groups, with a particular focus on nitrogen-containing molecules. Her work has been recognized with a Sloan Fellowship, a CIHR New Investigator Award, UBC’s McDowell Award, and a Killam Accelerator Research Fellowship.
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