Canada’s Science and Innovation Minister tours the CL3 lab

François-Philippe Champagne, Canada’s minister of innovation, science and industry, recently visited the UofT campus to tour the groundbreaking facilities. This tour included the geoxchange field, which is part of the recent efforts to cut carbon emissions, and the Combined Containment Level 3 (C-CL3) lab. The C-CL3 lab is situated in the Medical Sciences Building MSB, and has carried out vital research on Risk Group 3 pathogenic microbes including but not limited to coronaviruses. President Meric Gertler and Associate Vice-President and Vice-Provost, Strategic Initiatives Christine Allen accompanied the minister, alongside the lab’s facility manager Natasha Christie-Holmes, Temerty dean Patricia Houston, senior biosafety officer Ayoob Ghalami, and MoGen faculty member Scott Gray-Owen. The C-CL3 lab will be a keystone of the recently established Emerging and Pandemic Infections Consortium’s (EPIC) mission, headed by Dr. Gray-Owen and directed by Dr. Christie-Holmes, which is part of UofT’s Institutional Strategic Initiatives program and aims to address and brace for future and emerging infectious diseases. The minister praised UofT for addressing and tackling pandemic preparedness and climate change and sees our university’s research as critical for future scientific discoveries and breakthroughs.   

Read the full story by Rahul Kalpavalle of Minister Champagne’s visit here on UofT News.