Joana Gil-Mohapel Appointed Associate Director of Curriculum, Year 1 & 2

The IMP’s Dr. Joana Gil-Mohapel was appointed as Associate Director of Curriculum, Years 1 & 2, effective August 15, 2020. In this role, Dr. Gil-Mohapel will provide provincial leadership for the coordination and ongoing quality improvement of curricular components of the UBC MD Undergraduate Program across Years 1 and 2.

“I am very excited to take on this new challenge as Associate Director of Curriculum for Years 1 & 2,” she says. “We are living in challenging and difficult times, but our current circumstances have also created lots of opportunities for our program to grow and pioneer less-traditional teaching approaches, and I am excited to be part of this process. As we navigate the challenges and opportunities that the next couple of years will bring us, I feel very fortunate to work with such dedicated faculty, staff, and students across the four sites of our distributed medical program!”

Dr. Gil-Mohapel is an Assistant Teaching Professor at the University of Victoria and Affiliate Assistant Professor in the UBC Department of Medicine, Neurology Division.

“I have actually been at the Division of Medical Sciences (DMSC) and the IMP since 2008,” she says. “I worked in Dr. Brian Christie’s lab as a post-doctoral fellow for four years and a research associate for two years. I slowly started getting more and more involved with the IMP at that time. I became a CBL Tutor in 2010, and subsequently a Neuroanatomy Instructor, FLEX Advisor, and Portfolio Coach. I have worn many different hats during my time at the DMSC and IMP.”

Dr. Gil-Mohapel is still actively involved in teaching medical students and graduate students, and has received multiple teaching awards at the IMP, including the Bruce Crawford Award of Excellence and the Oscar G. Casiro Teaching Award in Medical Sciences. She had the honour of being the plenary speaker at the IMP Class of 2020 virtual graduating ceremony.

Dr. Gil-Mohapel has been the Provincial Course Co-Director for the MEDD421 and MEDD422/TICE courses of the medical undergraduate curriculum since 2017. In that capacity, she was awarded the 2018 Canadian Association for Medical Education (CAME) Certificate of Merit Award.

Prior to joining the DMSC/IMP, Dr. Gil-Mohapel obtained a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry in 2000 and a Master of Science in Cell Biology in 2003, both from the University of Coimbra in Portugal. She then pursued her PhD studies in Neuroscience at the Wallenberg Neuroscience Centre at Lund University in Sweden. She completed her PhD in 2007.  Dr. Gil-Mohapel has received research awards from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research, the Brazilian Science Without Borders Program, and the University of Victoria/Sao Paulo Research Foundation Partnership.

Dr. Gil-Mohapel’s most recent appointment follows the leadership of Dr. Barry Mason as the Associate Director of Curriculum, Years 1 and 2. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Dr. Mason for his exceptional contributions to the MD Undergraduate Program and leadership over the past several years. In particular, his work in support of accreditation, the attendance working group, and the incredible accomplishment of working with his team to move the Year 1 & 2 curriculum online during the COVID-19 pandemic.