Leah Cowen is the Vice-President, Research and Innovation, and Strategic Initiatives and a Professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics.

Her laboratory takes an interdisciplinary approach to understand what allows some microbes to exploit the host and cause disease, and to develop new strategies to treat life-threatening infectious disease.

Since 2007, Dr. Cowen has been a Canada Research Chair in Microbial Genomics and Infectious Disease in the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto. Her research has been recognized with a myriad of awards including a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award in the Biomedical Sciences, a Merck Irving S. Sigal Memorial Award, an E. W. R. Steacie Award from the Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council, a Ministry of Research and Innovation Early Researcher Award, and a Grand Challenges Canada Star in Global Health Award. She is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Dr. Cowen has cultivated a network of international excellence through her extensive team of over 70 collaborators, and is advancing knowledge translation as a co-founder of Bright Angel Therapeutics, a company that leverages state-of-the-art technologies for development of novel antifungal therapeutics.