Centres and organizations

Monika Winn
Monika Winn, director of the Centre for Social and Sustainable Innovation, is an international leader in socially and environmentally sustainable business strategies.

Research centres are organizations made up of a group of faculty members who collaborate on an area of research. Their work provides added value over and above their individual research programs.

UVic encourages the establishment of research centres that will enhance and facilitate disciplinary and interdisciplinary research collaboration, knowledge transfer and training.

The mysteries of aging

How and why do individuals age differently? That’s what researchers at UVic’s multidisciplinary Centre on Aging are hoping to discover as they take part in a national 20-year study of 50,000 Canadians aged 45 to 85.

Through the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging—one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive studies on the topic—researchers are observing the evolution of health and disease, physical and psychological functioning, and the social processes that accompany aging.

"It brings the biology of aging together with social, psychological and other aspects of aging to see how they intersect over time," says UVic sociologist Margaret Penning, who is a co-investigator on the study along with several other Centre on Aging researchers.

The Networks of Centres of Excellence program was established by the Canadian government in order to mobilize Canada's research talent in the academic, private and public sectors.

National research networks are given the mandate to go forward with leading-edge and internationally recognized fundamental and applied research in areas critical to economic and social development. Canadian talent in research and development is applied to the business of developing the economy with the goal of improving the overall quality of life for Canadians.

UVic faculty participate in the research programs of 8 of the 19 current national Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCEs):

UVic has three corporate entities related to research. They each have a board of directors with representation from government, industry and other institutions.