We are pleased to announce the appointment of Claudia Kleinman, PhD, as the Scientific Director of the Ludmer Centre for Neuroinformatics and Mental Health, effective February 1, 2026. As part of a new structure for the Centre, meant to better respond to the growing needs of its investigators and their research scope, Prof. Kleinman will carry forward the foundational work of the pioneering co-directors, and will oversee the centre鈥檚 leading role in collaborative and innovative mental health and brain research.
Prof. Kleinman鈥檚 career at 黑料网爆吃瓜 began in 2014, coinciding with the early days of the Ludmer Centre, where she was one of the initial principal investigators. She joined the Department of Human Genetics in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences as an Assistant Professor and Full Investigator at the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research (LDI). She has also been a mentor and lecturer in the interdisciplinary . In 2024, she was appointed to the role of co-director at the Ludmer Centre, leading the Bioinformatics and Statistical Genetics research theme. Her involvement at the Ludmer Centre since its early days has been instrumental to the Centre鈥檚 success.
Her transdisciplinary approach combines molecular biology, computer science, statistics and evolutionary biology to study biological systems 鈥� from the molecular level to environmental influences on the genome. Her research aims to advance our understanding of brain cancers and disorders by decrypting the fundamental mechanisms regulating gene expression, and their interplay with genetic and epigenetic factors. Her lab uses computational genomics to define pathological mechanisms of gene expression in cancer and neurodevelopment. They investigate the processes at the root of malignant pediatric brain tumours by integrating high resolution data from patients, experimental models and single-cell atlases of the normal developing brain. Using single-cell technologies, the Kleinman lab works to resolve cell-to-cell variation in pediatric brain tumors and other neurodevelopmental disease, providing new disease models and exploring new therapeutic approaches.
She has received awards from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and currently holds a career award from the Fonds de Recherche du Que虂bec 鈥� Sante虂 (FRQS). In 2020, she received the Canadian Cancer Society鈥檚 Bernard and Francine Dorval Prize for her work mapping the development of the human brain at the single cell level to identify when and where different childhood brain tumours arise. In 2021, Quebec Science named her paper in Nature Genetics, 鈥溾��, as one of Quebec鈥檚 . Her leadership at the Ludmer Centre will help pave the way for significant advances in neuroinformatics, mental health, and brain health in general.
We take this opportunity to acknowledge the Centre鈥檚 immediate former co-directors: Alan Evans, PhD, Dr. Patricia Pelufo Silveira, MD, PhD, Gustavo Turecki, MD, PhD 鈥� as well as former co-directors, Celia Greenwood, PhD, and Michael Meaney, PhD, 鈥� on their accomplishments and leadership and thank them for their commitment to the Ludmer Centre鈥檚 mission over the last decade.
Please join us in congratulating Prof. Kleinman on this appointment and wishing her every success in this new role. We look forward to this new direction for the Ludmer Centre.
