Dr. Aaron Phillips appointed associate dean, Innovation and Commercialization

The Cumming School of Medicine (CSM) is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Aaron Phillips, PhD, as the new associate dean of Innovation and Commercialization, effective July 1, 2024.

Dr. Phillips will replace Dr. Derek Exner, MD, who was the first associate dean in the role in 2022. 

Dr. Phillips is an associate professor in the departments of Physiology and Pharmacology, Cardiac Sciences and Clinical Neurosciences. He is the director of the CSM’s Restore Network, a research platform that bridges medical research institutes and biomedical engineering at the University of Calgary.

Dr. Phillips is a celebrated scientist whose research focuses on developing innovative therapeutics to treat spinal cord injury and neurological health issues. He also explores a combination of cardiovascular physiology and neuroscience to investigate autonomic and cardiovascular function. He established his laboratory at UCalgary in 2017.

Dr. Phillips earned his PhD in Experimental Medicine at the University of British Columbia (UBC). While at UBC he also completed fellowships in Spinal Cord Injury and Autonomic Cardiovascular Dysfunction within the International Collaboration on Repair Discoveries (ICORD). He later completed studies in Executive Medical Leadership Education at the Haskayne School of Business.

Dr. Phillips has received several awards including the Science & PINS Prize from Science, the Arthur Guyton Award for Excellence in Integrative Physiology, and the Heart and Stroke Foundation’s New Investigator Award. Avenue Magazine acknowledged him as a Top 40 Under 40 in 2020 and two years later he received UCalgary’s Killam Emerging Research Leader Award. More recently Dr. Phillips was the recipient of the 2023 Hopewell M.I.N.D. (Maximizing Innovation in Neuroscience Discovery) Prize, which advances his work to support neuro-recovery after spinal cord injury.

Please join me in welcoming Dr. Phillips to his new leadership role. 

Sincerely,

Todd Anderson, MD
Dean, Cumming School of Medicine
University of Calgary