Christopher Kennedy

Christopher Kennedy is a Senior Scientist within the Inflammation and Chronic Disease Program and Kidney Research Centre at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and a Full Professor in the Faculty of Medicine / Department of Medicine at the University of Ottawa. He is the Director of Awards & Prizes in the Faculty of Medicine, a position he has held since 2018.

Dr. Kennedy served as Chair and Scientific Officer of the CIHR Hematology Digestive Diseases and Kidney open operating grant peer review committee as well as Chair of the Advisory Board for the CIHR’s Institute of Nutrition, Metabolism and Diabetes (2017-2021). He chaired the Kidney Foundation of Canada’s Biomedical Research Grants Committee and is a member of the CIHR College of Reviewers.

Dr. Kennedy has provided years of service to the Canadian Council on Animal Care, where he was the representative for the Association of Faculties of Medicine to the Canadian Council of Animal Care, served on the CCAC’s Standards Committee and has over 10 years served on the University of Ottawa’s Animal Care Committee.  Most recently he was Chair of the CCAC Board of Directors, a position he assumed in 2019 after a year as Vice-Chair and is currently a member of the council’s Finance and Strategic Taskforce Planning committees and Ethics subcommittee.

Dr. Kennedy’s research program is a fertile training environment for undergraduates, graduates and postgraduates and is funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR), the Kidney Foundation of Canada (KFOC), and the Canada Foundation for Innovation.  Employing state-of-the-art animal models, his research seeks to identify how the kidney’s filtration system and vasculature are damaged in diabetes and high blood pressure – the two leading causes of kidney disease in Canada, with the goal of translating his work into novel therapies that would slow down or prevent kidney disease progression.