Office of the Vice-President (Research)

Dr. William Ghali has held the role of Vice-President (Research) at the University of Calgary since March 1, 2020.

During his term as VPR, Dr. Ghali has overseen the creation of several new institutional initiatives, including the Institutes for Transdisciplinary Scholarship, the UCalgary Research Excellence Chairs program, and the UCalgary Visiting Scholars Program. Under Dr. Ghali’s leadership, UCalgary was named a top 5 research institution in Canada for the first time (2021) and a top start-up creator in Canada three years in a row (2021-2023). He also helped secure the institution’s second Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF) grant for One Child Every Child, the largest research grant in UCalgary history.

Dr. Ghali is a world-class researcher and Professor in the Departments of Medicine and Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary. Dr. Ghali is also a physician, specializing in General Internal Medicine (MD (1990) - University of Calgary, FRCP(C) (1994)) - Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario), and completed methodological training in health services research and epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health (MPH, 1995). Dr. Ghali was the scientific director of the O’Brien Institute for Public Health at the University of Calgary.

Dr. Ghali has held millions of dollars of peer-reviewed research funding from a number of agencies through his research program, focused on evaluating and improving health system performance for better patient outcomes and improved system efficiency. He is a Fellow of both the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and the Royal Society of Canada, and is co-director of the University of Calgary World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre in Disease Classifications and Health Information.