The University of Alberta Faculty of Law is proud to congratulate our colleague.
The University of Alberta Faculty of Law is proud to congratulate our colleague Timothy Caulfield - Professor in the Faculty of Law and the School of Public Health, Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy, Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and the Royal Society of Canada - for earning a 2016 Distinguished Academic Award from the Confederation of Alberta Faculty Associations (CAFA).
CAFA is the organization representing academic staff associations at the University of Alberta, University of Lethbridge, University of Calgary, and Athabasca University. The annual CAFA Awards recognize excellence and honour the many ways in which the scholarly or creative work of university academic staff members serves the public outside the university. Professor Caulfield is one of two recipients of the Distinguished Academic Award for 2016. The winners will be recognized at an award ceremony in Edmonton on September 22, 2016.
"This is a true honour and really a reflection of the wonderful team at the Health Law Institute," said Professor Caulfield. "I have always been surrounded by ridiculously smart, enthusiastic, and creative colleagues. Also, the university has been fantastically supportive. How many law professors are given the space to explore the impact of celebrity culture?"
Professor Caulfield writes for and appears frequently in the national and international media on a range of health policy issues. His latest book, Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything?: When Celebrity Culture and Science Clash earned him the 2015 Science in Society General Book Award from the Canadian Science Writers' Association.
His academic work has led to positions on numerous national and international policy and research ethics committees, including the Canadian Biotechnology Advisory Committee, Genome Canada's Science Advisory Committee, and the Federal Panel on Research Ethics. Most recently, he was a member of a task force of experts from the International Society for Stem Cell Research that released a series of guidelines to help stop the spread of science hype. Professor Caulfield also co-authored an article for Science on the dangers of hyping scientific research. He is a Fellow of the Trudeau Foundation and the principal investigator for a number of interdisciplinary projects that explore the ethical, legal, and health policy issues associated with a range of topics, including stem cell research, genetics, patient safety, the prevention of chronic disease, obesity policy, the commercialization of research, complementary and alternative medicine, and access to health care.
"Professor Caulfield's commitment to providing evidence-based evaluation of health myths and assumptions - from his work on stem cells to diets to alternative medicine - and making the results of that work both public and accessible is a wonderful example of how our professors contribute to the Faculty of Law's mission to serve the broader public interest," said Dean Paul Paton. "Tim's award recognizes his significant contributions to the development of Canadian health and science policy and is yet another feather in the Health Law Institute's cap, following Prof. Ubaka Ogbogu's CAFA Distinguished Academic Early Career Award in 2015. I am tremendously proud of Tim's latest achievement and of the recent stream of awards earned by our professors. These external recognitions are important for validating what I've been telling people since I arrived in 2014: this is an outstanding Faculty."