MONTRÉAL, November 25, 2013 – Dr. Jean-Sébastien Joyal was recently awarded a prestigious Career Award for Medical Scientist (CAMS) from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, one of ten in North America. He is the first Canadian-sponsored physician-scientist to receive this $700,000 grant since the creation of the award in 2007. This award recognizes Dr. Joyal’s outstanding potential for medical research and his dual training in both research and medicine, which represents in itself an extremely rare accomplishment. Besides a postdoctoral scholarship in vascular biology and ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School and a Ph.D. in Pharmacology at McGill University, Dr. Joyal has combined a Fellowship in pediatric cardiac critical care at Greet Ormond Street Hospital in London and a specialty in pediatrics at the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Center (CHU Sainte-Justine).

Dr. Jean- Sébastien Joyal is a pediatric intensive care physician and a researcher in the Metabolic Health research axis at CHU Justine. He aims to improve the effectiveness of treatments against blindness, as well as to discover new drugs that are specific to neuron metabolism and blood vessel growth. Dr. Joyal is also an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Université de Montréal.

The Burroughs Wellcome Fund is a private foundation dedicated to the advancement of biomedical sciences by supporting research and educational endeavours. This award aims to support physicians who are also engaged in research, a breed of scientist that has been steadily declining. Over a period of five years, the Foundation’s support will give Dr. Joyal’s laboratory a kick start and speed up the achievement of research results.