François Bénard

Dr. François Bénard is the Senior Executive Director, Research at BC Cancer. He is responsible for setting and facilitating a comprehensive cancer research strategy and agenda for British Columbia in collaboration with research leadership provincially, nationally and internationally

Dr. Bénard is an international leader in molecular imaging as well as an important part of the research community in British Columbia. His interests combine state-of-the art clinical care with a thriving translational research program in imaging and radionuclide therapy. After leading a highly successful molecular imaging program in Sherbrooke, Québec, he relocated to British Columbia in 2008, where he was awarded the BC Leadership Chair in Functional Cancer Imaging. He became Head of the Division of Nuclear Medicine at the University of British Columbia and Scientific Director of Functional Imaging at BC Cancer. Under his leadership, his team designed and built a new cyclotron and imaging facility, implemented a comprehensive preclinical imaging platform, set up research radiochemistry and radiopharmacology laboratories and expanded the clinical program. Dr. Bénard has also been highly successful in raising peer-reviewed funding to support the program, recently receiving a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Foundation Scheme grant totaling $1.4 million for the development of new radiopharmaceuticals for cancer diagnosis and therapy. Dr. Bénard has earned numerous prestigious awards over the years, including most recently the 2015 Brockhouse Canada Prize for Interdisciplinary Research in Science and Engineering.