Governance & Advisories
The Edwin S. H. Leong Centre for Healthy Children works with its partners within the University of Toronto, The Hospital for Sick Children and ICES to improve the health and well-being of children around the world. Our governance model supports the Leong Centre’s researchers and leadership to facilitate a strong culture of collaboration and cooperation.
Executive Management Committee
Professor Trevor Young graduated from the medical school at the University of Manitoba in 1983. He completed his postgraduate training in psychiatry in 1987, and then his PhD at the Institute of Medical Science, University of Toronto in 1995 and was a research fellow at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He has been Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences at McMaster University; Professor and Head, Department of Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia; and Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. He was also Physician-in-Chief, Executive Vice President Programs at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.
Prof. Young is a clinician-scientist who studies the molecular basis of bipolar disorder and its treatment. He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed journal articles and has held more than 35 peer-reviewed grants. Prof. Young and his lab focused on the processes that lead to long-term changes in brain structure and function in patients with bipolar disorder, and how mood-stabilizing drugs can alter those changes. Prof. Young has supervised more than 30 research and clinical trainees.
Prof. Young has received many awards including the 2015 Colvin Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Mood Disorders Research from the Brain and Behaviour Research Foundation, the Douglas Utting Award for outstanding contributions in the field of mood disorders, and the Canadian College of Neuropsychopharmacology Heinz Lehmann Award. He has led several large clinical programs including the Mood Disorders Program at Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital, which received the American Psychiatric Services Gold Achievement Award. In 2009, he was made a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.
Since January 1, 2015, Prof. Young has been Dean of Canada’s largest Faculty of Medicine, with 9,662 faculty and staff members, as well as 7,719 students enrolled in undergraduate medicine, postgraduate medicine, radiation sciences, and professional and doctoral graduate programs. As Vice Provost, Relations with Health Care Institutions, Dean Young oversees the University's relationship with nine fully affiliated hospitals and 20 community-affiliated hospitals and health facilities. The Faculty and its fully affiliated hospitals are also a thriving research enterprise — one of the largest in North America — and has attracted $895 million in research funding (2018-19). In 2020, the National Taiwan University Ranking placed U of T Medicine first in Canada and third in the world in medicine.
Dr. Ronald Cohn has served as President and CEO of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada since May 1, 2019. Cohn joined SickKids in September 2012 as the Chief of the Division of Clinical and Metabolic Genetics, Co-Director of the Centre for Genetic Medicine, and Senior Scientist at the SickKids Research Institute. He became the Inaugural Women’s Auxiliary Chair in Clinical and Metabolic Genetics in April of 2013, and joined the department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto. In 2016 he was appointed to the position of Chief of Paediatrics at SickKids, and Chair of Paediatrics at the University of Toronto.
Cohn received his medical degree from the University of Essen, Germany. After his postdoctoral fellowship at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the laboratory of Dr. Kevin Campbell, he moved to Baltimore where he was the first combined resident in paediatrics and genetics at the Johns Hopkins University. He subsequently joined the faculty of the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins where he became the director of the worlds' first multidisciplinary centre for Hypotonia, which has earned national and international recognition. Dr. Cohn was also the director of the medical genetics residency program at Johns Hopkins.
He has received numerous awards including the David M. Kamsler Award for outstanding compassionate and expert care of pediatric patients in 2004; First Annual Harvard-Partners Center for Genetics and Genomics Award in Medical in 2006; and the NIH Young Innovator Award in 2008. Over the last few years, Dr. Cohn has developed an interest in applying a concept of Precision Child Health to the care of children. His own research focuses on implementing genome editing technologies for the treatment of neurogenetic disorders.
Dr. Meredith Irwin was appointed Chair of the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Toronto and Chief of Paediatrics at The Hospital for Sick Children in 2020. She holds cross-appointments at U of T in Medical Biophysics and Laboratory Medicine & Pathobiology. Prof. Irwin is a Senior Scientist in the Cell Biology program in SickKids’ Research Institute, as well as a paediatric oncologist and a global leader in the development of clinical trials and novel biomarkers for patients with neuroblastoma. Prof. Irwin is also Co-Director of the Neuroblastoma Program and Head of the Solid Tumour Section of the Division of Haematology/Oncology, where she serves as an Attending Physician.