The University of Ottawa Heart Institute is pleased to announce Katey Rayner, PhD, was selected as the recipient of the 2021 Global Achievement Award. The Global Achievement Award recognizes a UOHI investigator who has made, or is demonstrating the potential to make, a global impact in their sphere of work.
Dr. Rayner is globally recognized for her exceptional contributions to our understanding of the roles of microRNA and inflammation in driving atherosclerosis and cholesterol metabolism.
Dr. Rayner is currently co-leading a global consortium, spanning researchers from France, Spain and Canada, investigating cholesterol trafficking and cellular oxidation to reverse atherosclerosis and prevent vascular cognitive impairment. Her leadership in this global consortium has resulted in a European Area Research Network Joint Transnational Grant in Cardiovascular Diseases and Vascular Dementia. This work has excellent alignment with a key priority of the ORACLE Strategic Plan in Heart-Brain Research. It also aligns with the CFI-funded, UOHI-led CardioNeuroMind initiative in which Dr. Rayner is one of the lead Principal Investigators. Additionally, she is leading an interdisciplinary team comprising of biomedical scientists, chemists and clinician investigators bringing basic discoveries to clinical translation. The team is scaling up existing interventions to better understand the safety and efficacy of targeting RIPK1 inflammation and developing new diagnostic molecular imaging agents based on RIPK1. The work leverages Dr. Rayner’s ongoing collaborations with Ionis Pharmaceuticals, a leader in RNAi drug development. The project team is recognized with major funding, a CIHR Team Grant: Preparation to Trial in Inflammation for Chronic Conditions.
Dr. Rayner has published several high impact studies, including papers in Science, Nature, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Circulation, Circulation Research, ATVB and Nature Metabolism.
Dr. Rayner’s expertise is sought out globally; her global influence is outsized for her career stage. She chaired the American Heart Association’s Vascular Discovery 2021, a scientific meeting that brought together international scientists to share the latest findings and innovations in cardiovascular science. She has held key leadership roles in the international scientific community. She is an elected member of the American Heart Association Leadership Academy and AHA Council on Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, and has served as Chair of this Council’s Early Career Committee. She serves on the NIH Study Section on Atherosclerosis and Inflammation of the Cardiovascular System, and on peer review committees of the CIHR and the Heart and Stroke Foundation. She is a regular reviewer for Circulation, Circulation Research, Nature Communications and Cell Reports. She is an Editorial Board member of the AHA’s lead journal Atherosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology.
Dr. Rayner is a member of the Royal Society of Canada College of New Scholars. She has been recognized with a number of other prestigious honours, including the most recent AHA’s Joseph A. Vita Award, AHA Daniel Steinberg Award for Early Career Researcher, CIHR and Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada’s New Investigator Awards. She was previously recognized as a UOHI Investigator of the Year, the University of Ottawa Faculty of Medicine’s Researcher of the Year – Biomedical and most recently, the Jean Himms-Hagen Research Award for her international leadership, innovation and contributions to research.
Congratulations to Dr. Rayner on her outstanding global achievements!