McGill’s top award is the Honorary Doctorate, the University’s way of paying tribute to those who have made their mark through outstanding scholarly, scientific or artistic achievement, or by virtue of exceptional contributions to the public good through their professional or philanthropic activity.
“McGill’s honorary doctorate recipients embody the remarkable diversity of excellence that defines our university community,” said Deep Saini, President and Vice-Chancellor of McGill.
“Their achievements not only inspire our graduates to reach beyond conventional boundaries, but also remind us of the profound impact that knowledge, creativity and service can have on the world.”
As part of this spring’s Convocation ceremonies, 10 honorary doctorates will be awarded:
Quarraisha Abdool Karim
Doctor of Science, honoris causa (D.Sc.) Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences (May 27, 10 a.m.)
Quarraisha Abdool Karim is an epidemiologist specializing in infectious diseases who has won seemingly countless prizes and honours.
One of the world’s leading AIDS researchers, Abdool Karim is credited with revolutionizing the prevention of the disease in adolescent girls and young women via her development of the CAPRISA 004 Trial at the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa, where she is Associate Scientific Director. She is also a Vice-Chancellor in the College for Health Sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and a professor in Clinical Epidemiology at Columbia University.
Donald William Lewtas
Doctor of Laws, honoris causa (LL.D.) Desautels Faculty of Management (May 28, 10 a.m.)
Donald Lewtas is a distinguished leader in the business and finance sectors, as well as being a generous supporter of McGill, giving back to his alma through various initiatives.
A highlight of Lewtas’s long McGill legacy is the transformation of the former McGill Bookstore into the Donald E. Armstrong Building, home to the Desautels Faculty of Management’s MBA and master’s programs. His work on the fundraising campaign also contributed to 37 new MBA student awards, enabling young leaders to concentrate on their studies.
David O’Brien
Doctor of Laws, honoris causa (LL.D.) Faculty of Law (May 28, 3 p.m.)
When David O’Brien was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2008, he was cited as “one of Canada’s most respected corporate leaders.” He has been a pre-eminent figure in the fields of energy, banking and transportation since the late20th century.
Throughout his career, O’Brien has been a steadfast supporter of his alma mater, greatly enhancing McGill’s global leadership in human rights and legal scholarship. Among his other philanthropic undertakings, O’Brien has chaired the Centre for Affordable Water and Sanitation, a charity with activities in 87 countries, expanding access to drinking water and improved hygiene conditions.
Jocelyne M. Guilbault
Doctor of Music, honoris causa (D.Mus.) Schulich School of Music (May 28, 3 p.m.)
Jocelyne Guilbault has had a groundbreaking career in ethnomusicology and popular music studies. She has played a crucial role in contextualizing and deepening the study of the popular forms and their roles in society, with special emphasis on the music of the Caribbean.
From her early field work in the Caribbean and then a teaching career that led her to University of California, Berkeley, Guilbault has focused on the intersections of music, anthropology, cultural studies and history. She is known for confronting questions of identity and appropriation, and the ways that issues of race, ethnicity and gender can attach themselves to music.
Shuji Nakamura
Doctor of Science, honoris causa (D.Sc.) Faculty of Engineering (May 29, 10 a.m.)
Shuji Nakamura is a co-winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics. Along with his colleagues Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano, he earned the prestigious prize for the invention of blue-light-emitting diodes, which led to the commercialization of energy-saving LED lightbulbs in 1993.
Nakamura is a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Inventors and the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He holds 422 patents in the U.S. alone and has written or collaborated on 853 publications to date.
Karim Khan
Doctor of Science, honoris causa (D.Sc.) Faculty of Education (May 29, 3 p.m.)
Karim Khan is a leading figure in contemporary sports medicine and its broader public applications. He has been a trailblazer in sports-related injury prevention, treatment and has contributed to defining written works in the field, including the Brukner and Khan’s Clinical Sports Medicine, a work often referred to as the bible of sports medicine.
Khan is a professor in the Department of Family Practice and School of Kinesiology at the University of British Columbia and serves as the Scientific Director of the CIHR Institute of Musculoskeletal Health and Arthritis (IMHA).
Yoshua Bengio
Doctor of Science, honoris causa (D.Sc.) Faculty of Science (May 30, 3 p.m.)
Yoshua Bengio is a world leader in the field of Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning. Often described by media outlets as “a godfather of AI,” Bengio was named by TIME magazine as one of the hundred most influential people in 2024.
Bengio is a professor of Computer Science at Université de Montréal and the founder and scientific advisor of the McGill-affiliated Mila, an institute specializing in AI and machine learning. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society, an Officer of the Order of Canada and co-winner of the A.M. Turing Award, equivalent in prestige among computer scientists to a Nobel Prize.
David Adams Richards
Doctor of Letters, honoris causa (D.Litt.) Faculty of Arts (June 2, 10 a.m.)
David Adams Richards is an acclaimed author whose prolific writing career has made him a key part of Canada’s national literary identity. He has so far published 20 novels, seven works of non-fiction, three plays and two story collections.
He earned two Governor General’s Awards: Nights Below Station Street received the prize for fiction, and Lines on the Water: A Fisherman’s Life on the Miramichi won for non-fiction. Among Richards’s most popular works is Mercy Among the Children, for which he won a Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2000.
He was named a member of the Order of Canada in 2009 and appointed to the Senate in 2017.
Joseph Henri Chalhoub
Doctor of Laws, honoris causa (LL.D.) School of Continuing Studies (June 3, 3 p.m.)
Joseph Henri Chalhoub built a business career whose focus included environmental entrepreneurship. Among the companies he founded is Heritage Crystal Clean, a NASDAQ-listed firm that provides environmental services to small- and medium-sized businesses.
Chalhoub used his success to support two of his most passionate causes: education and community. In 2018, he and his wife, Sandra Albers-Chalhoub, launched a McGill’s School of Continuing Studies bursary that helps support students across a wide range of fields. He also oversaw design, construction and fundraising for the Saint Sauveur Cathedral, which, since its inauguration in 2007, has served as a hub for Montreal’s Melkite community.
Adam Drewnowski
Doctor of Science, honoris causa (D.Sc.) Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (June 4, 10 a.m.)
Adam Drewnowski is a world leader in the study of obesity, its social and geographical determinants, and its impact on global public health. He is a professor of Epidemiology and director of the Center for Public Health Nutrition at the University of Washington. He is also a member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, the National Academy of Sciences and director of the University of Washington Center for Obesity Research.
Among Drewnowski’s innovations is the Nutrient Rich Foods Index, a profiling model that rates and ranks individual foods based on their overall nutritional value and also serves to assess the carbon cost of food production.