Dr. Graham Bell - Background

Education and Career

1983

Associate Professor at McGill University, Montreal

1989 

Professor at McGill University, Montreal

Honours and Awards

Service to the Community

Redpath Museum. The Redpath Museum is the university museum of McGill; it is a research, teaching and public museum of natural history and non-Canadian ethnology. I was its Director from 1995 to 2005, when I led a complete renovation of physical space, cabinets and all exhibits on all three display floors, centred on themes of Back to the Sea, History of Life and World Cultures. The museum has about 12000 visitors per year, including 6400 schoolchildren in groups from 200 schools. I raised a total of about $1.5m from granting agencies, private foundations and individual donations for weekend workshops, web sites, travelling exhibits, permanent exhibits and renovation. 

Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution. I played a leading role in the foundation of the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution. I convened the meeting that established the CSEE and drafted its by-laws; acted as chair of the Local Organizing Committee for its inaugural meeting; and served as its founding President. The CSEE has become a major national scientific society; it numbers about 800 members, drawn from all regions of Canada. It holds an annual meeting, supports scientific and outreach activities, and acts as an intermediary between researchers and the major funding agencies.

Royal Society of Canada. The Royal Society of Canada (RSC): The Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada was established in 1882 as the senior Canadian collegium of distinguished scholars, artists and scientists. It is Canadaπs National Academy. The RSC exists to promote Canadian research and scholarly accomplishment in both of Canadaπs official languages, to mentor young scholars and artists, to recognize academic and artistic excellence, and to advise governments, non-governmental organizations, and Canadians generally on matters of public interest. The RSC consists of three bilingual Academies embracing a broad range of scholarly disciplines and†artistic fields: Academy I is the Academy of the Arts and Humanities; Academy II is the Academy of Social Sciences. Academy III is the Academy of Science. I was elected as President of the Academy of Science from 2010 to 2012, and as President of the Society from 2013 to 2015. The priorities for my Presidency were: the establishment of a College for New Scholars, Artists and Scientists; and the engagement of the Fellowship in national affairs.

Meetings and journals. I have organized several symposia, meetings and workshops, including the joint meeting of the Society for the Study of Evolution, the American Society of Naturalists and the Society for Systematic Biology in Montreal, June 1995, and the Workshop on Evolutionary and Environmental Genomics of Yeast at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg, in October 2008. I was North American Editor of the Journal of Evolutionary Biology from 1999 to 2002.

Selected invited, keynote and plenary presentations

Impact