Christine Allen is a Professor and the inaugural Associate Vice-President and Vice-Provost Strategic Initiatives at the University of Toronto. She completed her doctoral research in the Department of Chemistry at McGill University and post-doctoral research in the Department of Advanced Therapeutics at the B.C. Cancer Agency. She joined the University of Toronto in 2002 and has established a leading research group focused on the design of innovative materials and drug delivery technologies with over 140 peer-reviewed publications in her field. She has over 20 years of experience in the drug delivery field and has significant expertise in the design, development, and evaluation of advanced drug delivery systems. Christine’s research laboratory is located within the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy building at University of Toronto St. George campus. She is co-founder of Nanovista Inc., a company developing multi-modal visualization agents for high precision image-guided cancer therapy. She has received career awards from the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR), the Canadian Society for Pharmaceutical Sciences (CSPS), the Association of Faculties of Pharmacy of Canada, and most recently the Controlled Release Society (CRS) Women in Science Award. She is a fellow of CSPS, CRS, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (CAHS). Christine is the outgoing President of CSPS, the President Elect of CRS and a member of the Governing Council and Executive Committee of NSERC. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Controlled Release, a pre-eminent journal in pharmaceutics and drug delivery. Christine is a member of the Toronto Initiative for Diversity and Excellence and a strong advocate for equity, diversity and inclusion in research and innovation. She is also a member of the Connaught Committee at University of Toronto, which oversees the management of the Connaught Fund held at the University of Toronto, In 2019, she launched the book club “Women in Stem: Leading and Reading” for faculty, staff and students at the University of Toronto. In 2021, she was appointed CEO and Scientific Director of the Nanomedicine Innovation Network (NMIN), as well as Interim Director of the Precision Medicine initiative at University of Toronto (PRiME).