Dr. Brian Postl, dean, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences and vice-provost (health sciences), was pleased to announce in June the appointment of Dr. Prashen Chelikani as the director of grant development – Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) for the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences.
Dr. Chelikani is a professor of oral biology at the Dr. Gerald Niznick College of Dentistry; director, Manitoba Chemosensory Biology research group and a scientist with the Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba (CHRIM). He is an alumnus of the University of Manitoba earning his PhD in microbiology in 2004 and completing his postdoctoral training as an American Heart Association postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Nobel laureate, Dr. H. Gobind Khorana at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., USA.
Since starting his lab in 2007 at the University of Manitoba, Dr. Chelikani has received more than $5.5 million in peer-reviewed funding. Currently, he holds both a NSERC-discovery grant and Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) project grants as principal investigator.
Dr. Chelikani has extensive grant reviewing experience over the past 14 years at the national level (NSERC and CIHR) and provincial levels including Manitoba Health Research Council, Manitoba Medical Services Foundation (MMSF), Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research. He currently serves on many local grant review committees including MMSF, CHRIM and UM’s CFI Advisory Committee. Dr. Postl is pleased that Dr. Chelikani has accepted this role and responsibility geared towards enhancing the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences’ success rate at NSERC grant competitions and invites everyone to join in welcoming him to this new role.