I grew up in Toronto to a family of Montrealers who left for jobs in the great exodus. I heard my whole life these stories of what a diverse and interesting city Montreal was, and I had always wanted to go back.
The medical system in Toronto when I trained there was a very different environment than it is at McGill. Here, we have this concept of the individual being part of a community and being excellent. And in Toronto it was very individualistic, and I really wanted to work in more of a team environment.
I'm now the director of MI4. One of the main reasons we established ourselves in 2017 was to prepare for the next pandemic. Of course, we didn’t necessarily expect it to arrive quite as quickly as it has, but now that it's here, we’re taking full advantage of our large community of over 250 researchers to tackle this pandemic.