UVic chemist to help shape Canada’s research future

by Valerie Shore

“I’m very excited about the opportunity to contribute in this way to research in Canada,” says Dr. Penny Codding (chemistry) of her newest career challenge.

Codding was recently named to a three-year term as associate vice-president of research at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIAR), a “university without walls” that forms interdisciplinary research networks across Canada and around the world to tackle fundamental questions about the natural world and human society.

CIAR currently supports 10 programs in the following areas: cosmology and gravity; earth system evolution; economic growth and institutions; evolutionary biology; human development; nanoelectronics; population health; quantum information processing; quantum materials; and successful societies (social processes underlying key health and human development issues).

In her new role, Codding will work with CIAR’s newly appointed vice-president of research — University of Toronto clinician Dr. Melvin Silverman — and CIAR president Chaviva Hosek to chart the intellectual direction of the institute.

“We’re in a period where we’re renewing some programs and ending others because their work is complete,” says Codding. “So we’ll be part of the leadership in identifying areas where we want to grow, fleshing out those ideas, and finding the people to develop them.”

Codding is no stranger to leadership, or to research. She served as UVic’s vice president academic from 1996 to 2001 where, among other things, she successfully decentralized budgetary decision-making and enrolment management, created a fund to help recruit and retain faculty, and played a key role in negotiating the first comprehensive framework agreement with UVic faculty and librarians.

Codding earned a BSc in chemistry and PhD in physical chemistry from Michigan State University. She came to UVic in 1996 from the University of Calgary, where she headed the chemistry department and had taught since 1981. She was also an Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research Scholar in the faculties of medicine and science at that university.

Codding is an internationally recognized expert in X-ray crystallography. “My research program focuses mostly on the way molecules interact with one another to make large assemblies,” she explains. “That’s important in terms of drug design and for the development of materials with certain kinds of properties.”

She’s also interested in ways of extracting information from large, complex databases. “This is a problem in many areas of science,” she says.
Codding, who has spent the last year working on her research and helping to redesign UVic’s first-year chemistry program, will retain her position in the department on a part-time basis while doing most of her CIAR work from Victoria. She begins the new job on May 1.

“It’s an opportunity to learn about complex interdisciplinary problems that I’m currently not well-versed in, so it’s a tremendous learning opportunity for me,” she says. “And, of course, I’ll be helping to shape the research agenda of Canada. It should be a very interesting three years.”