Danika Goosney

Danika Goosney

Director and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Museum of Nature

Dr. Danika Goosney joined NSERC in February 2019 as Vice-President, Research Grants and Scholarships Directorate.

She obtained her Bachelor of Science (first class honours) from St. Francis Xavier University and her PhD in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology and the Biotechnology Laboratory (now the Michael Smith Labs) at the University of British Columbia, for which she was awarded the Governor General’s Gold Medal, among other awards. She conducted her postdoctoral training as a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Immunology at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California.  

Following her postdoctoral research, Dr. Goosney worked as a research scientist at two Vancouver-based biotechnology companies in the areas of immunomodulatory therapeutics and cell-line engineering. In 2006, she moved to Ottawa and joined CIHR, where she held key director general positions within the Research, Knowledge Translation and Ethics Portfolio for almost a decade. Prior to joining NSERC, Dr. Goosney was the Associate Vice-President, Tri-agency Institutional Programs Secretariat, at the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. 

Dr. Goosney is recognized nationally as a leader on equity, diversity and inclusion in STEM, and a strong advocate for open science and science literacy.  She is also a passionate mentor for doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows looking to transition to science policy and public service.