Bernard Belleau Award

Sponsored by Paraza Pharma Inc.

The Bernard Belleau Award is presented to a scientist residing in Canada who has made a distinguished contribution to the field of medicinal chemistry through research involving biochemical or organic chemical mechanisms.

View the Terms of Reference and list of Past Winners

The 2026 winner of the Bernard Belleau Award is:

Katherine Ryan
University of British Columbia

Katherine Ryan studied Biological Chemistry at the University of Chicago as an undergraduate and then carried out her graduate research at MIT in structural biology with Catherine Drennan. She then worked at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography with Bradley Moore on marine natural products biosynthesis. She established her own research group in the Department of Chemistry at the University of British Columbia in 2011 and is currently a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Biosynthetic Enzymes. Her research is focused on the biosynthesis of natural products, with a focus on pathway elucidation, enzyme mechanisms, and genome-mining. Her group has made advances in elucidating the biosynthetic origins of unusual functional groups, with a particular focus on nitrogen-containing molecules. Her work has been recognized with a Sloan Fellowship, a CIHR New Investigator Award, UBC’s McDowell Award, and a Killam Accelerator Research Fellowship.   

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Past Winners