Board of Directors 2025-26

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Mark Giesbrecht, Chair, completed his term as Dean of Mathematics at the University of Waterloo on June 30, 2025 and is a Professor in the Cheriton School of Computer Science. Mark's research is in computational algebra and symbolic and matematical computation more generally. Prior to becoming Dean, Mark was the Director of the David R. Cheriiton School of Computer Science. He has been the program chair of the largest conference in computer algebra (ISSAC) and elected Chair of the AMC Special Interest Group in Symbolic and Algebraic Manipulation. He was an editor of the Journal of Symbolic and Computation from 2003-2020. Mark served as co-chair of the recent Fields Director Search Committee.

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Maria DeRosa, Vice Chair, is a Full Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Carleton University and Dean of Science. Her research examines a family of synthetic nucleic acids known as aptamers that can fold into 3D nanoscale structures capable of binding tightly to a specific molecular target. Her group is focused on developing a better understanding of how these systems work and using this information to design useful nanotechnology, such as biosensors, components for nanomedicine, or smart delivery devices. Prof DeRosa received the John Charles Polanyi Research Award for new researchers in 2006, an Ontario Early Researcher Award in 2010, and a Capital Educators Award in 2015. 

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Deirdre Haskell was born in Philadelphia, PA, USA in 1963. She moved to England in 1974, where she went to school and university, completing her BA at Oxford University in 1984. She moved back across the Atlantic to pursue a PhD at Stanford University, awarded in 1990, and back once more for a postdoctoral fellowship at Queen Mary College of the University of London.  A final transatlantic move took her to the College of the Holy Cross in her first tenure-track position. Another country then beckoned, and she moved to McMaster University in Canada in 2000, where she was promoted to full professor and served several terms as associate chair (undergraduate) of the Mathematics and Statistics department. Dr Haskell’s research in model-theoretic algebra has been supported by grants from the NSF and NSERC. During her career, she has organised many international conferences, including some at the Fields Institute. She has served on committees of the Association for Symbolic Logic, on the editorial board of the Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, and is currently a managing editor of Math Logic Quarterly. When not doing mathematics, she enjoys skiing, sailing, and hiking in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California.

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Patchen Barss is a Toronto-based science journalist and author, most recently of the Roger Penrose biography The Impossible Man. He has written for theBBC, Scientific American, and Nautilus and is a former Director ofCommunications at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. He works in the university, museum, and cultural sectors as a writer, communications strategist, and trainer, developing initiatives to connect the public with emerging ideas in science and the humanities.

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Stewart Beck has championed Canada's interests across Asia and the United States for four decades as a diplomat, trade commissioner, and policy expert. As former President and CEO of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, he built networks connecting key stakeholders throughout the region. His diplomatic career includes serving as Canada's High Commissioner to India and Consul General in Shanghai and San Francisco, establishing him as a leading expert on Asia-Pacific relations.

Mr. Beck's governance experience includes serving as former Chair of the Digital Global Innovation Cluster, where his understanding of innovative cultures like Silicon Valley and Taiwan, and rapidly evolving technology economies in China and India, enabled him to provide critical governance advice on technology development, including the role of clusters in fostering innovation ecosystems. Having lived and worked extensively in China and India, he brings unique insights into operating in advanced technology environments in these key markets, complemented by his strong relationships with decision-makers across Canada.

His expertise in international science and technology partnerships was further demonstrated through his membership on a Council of Canadian Academies panel on International Science and Technology Partnerships, which contributed to "Navigating Collaborative Futures," a report presenting an evidence-based framework for evaluating international science, technology, innovation and knowledge partnership opportunities for Canada.

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Lia Bronsard is originally from Québec. She did her undergraduate studies at the Université de Montréal, graduating in 1983, and earned her PhD in 1988 from New York University under the supervision of Robert V. Kohn. After short-term positions at Brown University, the Institute for Advanced Study, and Carnegie Mellon University, she moved to McMaster in 1992. She was president of the Canadian Mathematical Society for 2014–2016. 

Lia Bronsard was a plenary speaker at the Annual SIAM meeting in Boston in 2016, at the Mathematical Congress of the Americas in Montreal in 2017, at the CMS Summer meeting in Charlottetown in 2018 and at the 15th International Conference FBP 21 on Free Boundary Problems: Theory and Applications in 2021. She is on the editorial board of Nonlinear Analysis, CJM and CBM, Mathematics in Science and Industry, FACETS and the Canadian Applied Math Quaterly.

Her research has concentrated around singularly perturbed variational problems, including interfaces in reaction–diffusion systems, grain boundaries, superconducting vortices, and liquid crystal defects.  Bronsard was the 2010 winner of the Krieger–Nelson Prize. In 2018 the Canadian Mathematical Society listed her in their inaugural class of fellows.

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Juna Kollmeier uses a combination of cosmological hydrodynamic simulations and good old-fashioned analytic theory to figure out how the tiny fluctuations in density that were present when the universe was only 300 thousand years old, become the galaxies and black holes that we see after 14 billion years of cosmic evolution. She is the Founding Director of Carnegie's theoretical astrophysics program and built the theory program at the Observatories. She is also currently leading the SDSS-V, the world’s first all-sky robotic spectroscopic survey in the optical and the infrared.Kollmeier was the Director of the Canadian Institute for TheoreticalAstrophysics, another DIS-funded research Institute based at University of Toronto.

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Donna Kotsopoulos is the Dean and a professor at the Faculty of Education, Western University. She is an extremely proud alum of this Faculty where she earned her doctorate in educational studies in 2007 and was the Governor General Gold Medalist. She is an Ontario Certified Teacher and has experience teaching and conducting research in both elementary and secondary schools. Her research explores mathematics learning across the lifespan as well as postsecondary education – particularly strategic resource allocation, leadership and university governance. She has been funded by SSHRC, NSERC and various other agencies. She is the co-founder of LittleCounters©, a community-based program that supports the development of early numeracy. Her service, research and teaching has been recognized with several awards, including the John and Gail MacNaughton Prize for Excellence in Teaching (2020), an OCUFA teaching award (2014), the Fields Institute Fellow (2017).

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Alistair Mitchell is a venture capitalist and successful entrepreneur, corporate executive, and software services innovator. Co-Founder and Partner, Generation Ventures, and former Investment Director at the MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund, my prior experience was as both a start-up founder and large enterprise executive. At Blackberry, I managed business strategy, product marketing, software engineering, and business development in consecutive VP responsibilities for multimedia, instant messaging (BBM), and portfolio consumer services. Before Blackberry, I was Co-Founder and CEO of Puretracks, a pioneering digital music service that exited to Bell Canada. Early career experience included public radio and corporate communications. I hold an MBA (Bregman's Scholar) from the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, and a Bachelor of Music (Rosenthal Award) McGIll University. 

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Daniel Moore is a former colleague of Michael Zerbs at Scotiabank, Daniel was Group Head and Chief Risk Officer and lead transformation in areas such as AI,AML, Cybersecurity/IT and ESG risk management. He is now a board member of Deutsche Bank US and EDC, a Governor of Branksome Hall School in Toronto and Advisor to the Global Risk Institute, and remains an active investor through Riverrun Ventures. Daniel holds a BSc from Queen’s and a D. Phil. in Theoretical Physics from Oxford University and knows the Fields Institute quite well.y. 

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Forrest Parlee is Deputy Chief of Government Relations at the University of Toronto. Forrest’s work focuses on advancing the public policy interests of the University with governments at the federal, provincial and municipal levels. Previously, Forrest was Vice President, National Partnerships at Mitacs, Director of Public Affairs at a global e-commerce organization, and served as a political advisor to Cabinet Ministers at the provincial and federal levels. Forrest holds a BA and MA from Simon Fraser University.

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Yum-Tong Siu is currently William Elwood Byerly Professor of Mathematics, Harvard University. He received his B.A. in Mathematics from the University of Hong Kong in 1963, his M.S. from the University of Minnesota in 1964, and his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Princeton University in 1966. He started his academic career as an Assistant Professor at Purdue University (1966-1967), then University of Notre Dame (1967-1970), became Associate Professor at Yale University in 1970 and full Professor in 1972. He left Yale for Stanford University in 1978. After four years at Stanford, he joined the Harvard Mathematics Department in 1982. In 1992 he became the William Elwood Byerly Professor. He was an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow (1971-1973) and Guggenheim Fellow (1986). From 1996 to 1999 he served as Chairman of the Department. Over the years, he has held Visiting Professor positions in many well-known institutions around the world.

Professor Siu has been a prominent figure in the field of several complex variables for several decades. He has mastered techniques at the interface among complex variables, differential geometry, and algebraic geometry. He gave invited addresses at three International Congresses of Mathematicians, two of which were plenary addresses (Helsinki, 1978; Warsaw, 1983; Beijing, 2002). For his significant contributions to Several Complex Variables, he was awarded the Stefan Bergman Prize by the American Mathematical Society in 1993. Other academic honours include: honorary doctorates awarded by University of Hong Kong, University of Bochum (Germany), and University of Macau; Corresponding Member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences; Foreign Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Member of the National Academy of Sciences, Member of the Hong Kong Academy of Sciences, and Member of Academia Sinica.

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Salim Teja is a Partner with Radical Ventures where he leads the firm’s Velocity Team. Radical Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in entrepreneurs applying deep technology to transform massive industries. With a primary focus on machine learning and artificial intelligence, Radical Ventures partners with exceptional entrepreneurs to build enduring global companies. Salim brings over 25 years of experience in the technology sector as an entrepreneur, venture investor, corporate innovator, and innovation ecosystem builder. Prior to Radical Ventures, Salim served as President, Venture Services for MaRS Discovery District, where he led the strategic direction of MaRS’ Venture Services Program across four sectors including Energy & Environment (Cleantech), Finance &Commerce (Fintech), Health and Enterprise. This program engaged a portfolio of over 1200 high growth ventures who had raised over1.3B in capital and had generated over 1.4B in revenue. Prior to MaRS, Salim was Vice President Corporate Development with Indigo Books & Music where he drove the formation of the company’s Digital Innovation Lab. Prior to Indigo, Salim held the position of Chief Operating Officer at CX Digital, a leading online ad network. Salim has also held roles as Chief Operating Officer of b5media and Partner with early-stage VC firm Brightspark Ventures, where he was the driving force behind investments, including Radian6 (acquired by Salesforce.com). He was also Co-founder and Vice President of Sales and Business Development for San Francisco-based MobShop Inc, a pioneering e-commerce venture funded by GE Capital, Visa International, Mayfield Fund and Marc Andreessen. Salim is a graduate of the Ivey Business School at Western University.

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Prof. Ulrike Tillmann has worked broadly in topology, K-theory, and non-commutative geometry. Her work on the moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces and manifolds of higher dimensions has been inspired by problems in quantum physics and string theory, while new challenges in data science have motivated some of her recent work. 

After finishing school in Germany, Tillmann went to Brandeis University as a Wien International Scholar and studied for her PhD under Ralph Cohen at Stanford University. She then worked with Graeme Segal at Cambridge University before taking a position in Oxford where she has been a professor since 2000. Since 2021 she is the Director of the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge.

Tillmann was awarded the Whitehead Prize by the London Mathematical Society in 2004 and the Bessel-Humboldt Forschungs Preis in 2008. She was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 2008, an inaugural fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2012, a member of the Leopoldina in 2017 and a member of EurASc 2022. She has served on many scientific boards of international institutions, including the Oberwolfach Research Institute for Mathematics, the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF), the Turing Institute, and the Einstein Foundation. She was a member of Council of the Royal Society where she also served as (interim) Vice-President and is now chair of its Education Committee. She just finished her term as President of the London Mathematical Society and is a Vice-president of the International Mathematical Union.

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Maksims Volkovs is the Senior Vice President and Chief AI Scientist at TD Bank where he leads all research and development for Machine Learning at TD. Maks co-founded and was Head of Machine Learning at Layer 6 AI prior to its acquisition by TD, where his team built an industry-leading enterprise prediction platform with a focus on financial technology. Maks received his PhD from the University of Toronto where he was part of the Machine Learning Group led by Geoffrey Hinton. He previously worked at Microsoft Research and at Credit Suisse’s quantitative division. Maks has successfully competed in multiple international Machine Learning competitions organised by Google’s Kaggle and other platforms, achieving a status of Grandmaster (fewer than 200 in the world) with a global peak ranking of #47 out of over 130,000 data scientists. He has published over 25 papers in leading AI conferences and is co-inventor of 8 patents.

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Heather Woermke is a financial executive and Chartered Professional Accountant, currently serving as the Associate Vice-Principal (Finance and Administration) at Queen’s University. Her career at Queen’s has encompassed various leadership roles, including Associate Vice-Principal (Finance), Interim Associate Vice-Principal (Human Resources), and Executive Director of Finance and Operations for the Faculty of Arts and Science. In recognition of her collaborative and innovative contributions to the post-secondary financial sector, she has received the Distinguished Leadership Award from the Council of Ontario Finance Officers, and the Emerging Leader Award from the Canadian Association of University Business Officers. Beyond her administrative duties, Heather is the past Chair of the Council of Ontario Finance Officers and serves on the Boards of the McDonald Institute (a national hub for astroparticle physics research), SNOLAB (Canada’s deep underground research laboratory), and the McGill-Queen’s University Press (a scholarly publisher). Before joining Queen’s University in 2010, Heather built a robust career in national public sector and not-for-profit organizations, including the Bank of Canada, NAV CANADA, and the Medical Council of Canada.

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