Three UBC neuroscience experts among Order of Canada appointees

The Order of Canada pin is seen on the lapel of Canadian journalist and musician, Nardwuar the Human Serviette at Neptune Records in Vancouver, on Monday, December 29, 2025. (Ethan Cairns / The Canadian Press)

VANCOUVER — Three neurological scientists and researchers, all at the University of British Columbia, are among the appointees to the Order of Canada announced on Wednesday.

Neurologist Judy Illes, who was promoted to an Officer of the Order of Canada, said it was a “great day” for the university and “for neuroscience and the health sciences more broadly.”

Psychologist and neuroscientist Adele Diamond and Janice Eng, Canada Research Chair in Neurological Rehabilitation, were appointed as members of the order.

Illes said she, Eng and Diamond have all “worked so hard to achieve what we have today, not only as scholars and scientists, but as women.”

“At UBC all three of us have contributed to alleviating the burden of neurologic disease and more neurologic conditions more broadly, I’ll say,” she said in an interview Wednesday.

“So Dr. Eng with her work on stroke, Dr. Diamond with her work on neurodevelopmental disorders and cognition, and my own work at the interface of neuroscience and ethics.”

Diamond found out she was being named to the Order of Canada in October, but like the other 79 appointees could not go public with the news until Governor General Mary Simon revealed the appointees on New Year’s Eve.

Diamond said it was a “huge surprise” when she first heard the news.

“It just feels wonderful. It feels very gratifying,” Diamond said in an interview Wednesday. “It’s quite a big honour and on the one hand you feel like you don’t deserve it.”

She said the honour was “wonderful” to share with Eng and Illes.

“They’re so deserving as well and they’re both at UBC, so that’s fantastic,” she said.

Diamond was nominated by two people, one in neuroscience and one in education, for “totally different reasons,” she said.

Diamond said she’s also “thrilled” to be on the list with former Supreme Court of Canada Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella, now a professor at Harvard Law School, who was promoted to the highest level of Companion of the Order of Canada.

“She’s quite an idol of mine and I really look up to her,” Diamond said. “I was surprised that she hadn’t gotten it decades earlier.”

Illes said on Wednesday that news of her promotion reached her at an international neuroscience event in Korea, and the “honour is just unimaginable.”

“This just recognizes my continued and small contribution to Canada’s leadership in the neurological sciences and the health sciences more broadly, and also in biomedical ethics,” Illes said.

“When you put those things together, we have a field called neuroethics that I helped to pioneer now 25 years ago, and that now is firmly situated probably in every program in the neurological sciences around the world today.

“I’m very proud to be leading Canada in that effort to even grow the field even greater and continue our leadership.”

Eng said she got the news when a colleague told her that someone from the government was calling, and she thought it was about “either taxes or something bad,” but laughs about it now.

“I wasn’t sure that I was still in the running. So it was like, ‘wow, this is actually here,’” Eng said. “So it was thrilling to hear back from them.”

Eng said Order of Canada recognition for researchers like her, Illes and Diamond will “shed more light on what we do and hopefully the message that we actually have impact.”

“We’re all women, senior women in science who have done a lot of leadership and a lot of research innovations,” she said. “To have senior women in real leadership roles, I think it’s very certainly special and, you know, there’s not that many of us.”

Eng said she and her team are in the midst of wrapping up what they hope to be “very impactful” clinical trials and expanding their reach with research on stroke rehabilitation across B.C., Canada and the world.

“This kind of attention is very, very helpful for us,” she said.

Animal welfare researcher Marina von Keyserlingk and forensic nursing pioneer Sheila Dawn Early are also among the 13 appointees from British Columbia, with Early hailed for her work developing B.C.’s first forensic nursing program and its impact on health-care services for survivors of violence.

Vancouver broadcaster Nardwuar the Human Serviette was also named as an appointee, alongside author and broadcaster Ziya Tong, composer Barry Truax and philanthropist and Vancouver International Film Festival founder Leonard Schein, with children’s songwriter Raffi Cavoukian promoted to Companion of the Order of Canada.

Vancouver-based legal scholar James Hathaway, a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan, was appointed to the order for what the Governor General’s office describes as “seminal work” in the field of international refugee law.

Simon Fraser University researcher John Willinsky was made a member of the order for his work with the Public Knowledge Project, credited by the office for developing “the world’s most widely deployed scholarly publishing platform.”

This report by Darryl Greer of The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 31, 2025.