LONDON, Ont. – Robarts Research Institute scientist Dr. Ravi Menon has been named one of Canada’s Top 20 researchers aged 40 and under.
A panel of six judges from the United States and Britain selected Menon from nearly 300 science and engineering candidates for the Young Explorers Prize, awarded by The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIAR).
Menon, 38, is a biophysicist who develops techniques to better image the brain with the country’s most powerful experimental magnetic resonance imaging machine, the 4 Tesla, located at Robarts Research Institute.
Menon holds a Canada Research Chair in Functional Neuroimaging and is also Associate Professor in the Department of Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, and the Department of Medical Biophysics, at the University of Western Ontario.
The other winners include immunologist Josef Penninger of Toronto’s Amgen Institute and psychopharmacologist Shitij Kapur of the University of Toronto.
“I'm delighted to be named in such select company,” said Menon, who grew up in Vancouver and studied at the University of British Columbia, McGill University and University of Alberta in Edmonton. He came to Robarts nearly eight years ago after post-doctoral studies at the University of Minnesota.
“This prize recognizes work that our group hopes will have a substantial impact in understanding how the human brain works. The human brain is still one of the big mysteries in life.”
Menon’s work has helped secure Robarts’ position as an international leader at the interface of imaging and biology, particularly in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which allows neuroscientists to examine the precise areas of the brain involved with functions such as vision, speech, memory and pain. His 11-person lab is also working on techniques to better pinpoint areas of the brain involved in stroke, Lou Gehrig’s disease and schizophrenia.
The Toronto-based CIAR is awarding the Young Explorers Prize on the occasion of its 20th anniversary, which will be celebrated in Victoria, B.C., June 14-17. There the winners will join CIAR researchers in discussing the major intellectual questions of the next 20 years.