Appointment: Associate Vice-President (Research Integrity Support)

I am very pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Jason Acker as Associate Vice-President (Research Integrity Support) for a three-year term beginning on August 1, 2022. This is a new position in the Research and Innovation portfolio, and it is part of the structure that was announced on December 2, 2021.

A graduate of the University of Alberta, Dr. Acker completed his PhD in 2000 and then served two years as a Research Fellow in Surgery at the Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He is currently a Professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, where he has worked since 2002. He has recently served as a member of the GFC Executive Committee, Chair of the GFC Executive Subcommittee on Governance and Procedural Oversight, the Vice-Chair of the GFC Academic Planning Committee, a member of GFC from the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry, and as a member of the University Research Policy Committee (URPC). As a GFC Representative to the U of A Senate, Dr. Acker has served on the Senate Executive Committee, is the Co-Chair of the Senate’s Communications Committee, and a member of the Honorary Degree Selection Committee.

Dr. Acker and his team perform applied development and translational research that is focused in three areas. The first is to study the response of cells and tissues to freezing and thawing, which has enabled advances in the preservation and storage of cellular therapeutic products for clinical transfusion and transplantation. The second is to evaluate blood product manufacturing, quality assessment and utilization to affect improvements in the safety and quality of blood products in Canada. The third area is the development of novel diagnostic technologies that have commercial and clinical benefits for environmental monitoring, human and veterinary medicine and food safety.

Dr. Acker has held a series of professional appointments with Canadian Blood Services since 2002, and he is currently a Senior Research Scientist in the Innovation and Portfolio Management group. Dr. Acker has extensive Postdoctoral Fellows and graduate student supervisory experience, and in 2019 he was awarded the University’s Graduate Students’ Association Graduate Student Supervisor Award and in 2020 the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry Tier 1 Excellence in Mentoring Award. He served as the Academic Director for the Postdoctoral Fellows and Academic Visitors Office from 2019 to 2022. Active in company development, he is the Co-founder and Director of PanTHERA CryoSolutions Inc. In 2019, Dr. Acker was named a Fellow of the Society for Cryobiology, only the fourth Canadian to be so honoured.

As the AVP (Research Integrity Support), Dr. Acker will be responsible for building, implementing and managing a framework that supports programs and services encompassing all research integrity areas, including compliance, ethics certification, clinical trials monitoring, human and animal ethics, safeguarding research, and legal requirements related to research.

Please join me in welcoming Dr. Acker to his new role at the U of A.

Aminah Robinson Fayek
Vice-President (Research and Innovation)