Connie Eaves: 20Q20 interview

Connie Eaves, OC, FRSC, FRS, CorrFRSE

Distinguished Scientist, Terry Fox Laboratory, BC Cancer Research Institute Professor, Medical Genetics, University of British Columbia

20 questions with Connie Eaves

1. Where were you born?
I was born in Ottawa, but grew up in Kingston, Ontario.

2. Where did you go to school?
I went to school in Kingston, first to public school and then to the only high school at the time — the Kingston Collegiate and Vocational Institute (KCVI). I undertook my undergrad and master’s degrees at Queen’s University also in Kingston. I then went to the United Kingdom where I obtained a PhD in immunology from the University of Manchester based on research I undertook in the Paterson Laboratories of the Christie Hospital and Holt Radium Institute. In the UK, the practice was you could do your PhD research almost anywhere in an academically approved environment. There were no course requirements, no committees and no other oversight, except for the interactions with your thesis supervisor. I worked with Professor Laszlo Lajtha, already a distinguished hematologist interested in stem cells and first Director of the Paterson Laboratories. He also coined the term Gº to uniquely identify quiescent cells that could still be activated to proliferate. After completing my PhD, I stayed on an extra year to wrap up. I then returned to Toronto in 1970 where I had the good fortune to become a postdoctoral fellow at the Ontario Cancer Institute (OCI) with Dr. James Till.

Read the full interview here. 

Published December 2021.