Dr. Doug Hamilton

What are you currently working on?

“My lab works predominantly on wound healing, specifically the molecular factors that influence and regulate wound repair processes. We then use this knowledge to design materials to try to enhance repair. We do everything from animal work through to using human tissue to understand how and why cells decide whether they’re going to make extracellular matrix or not.We have situations where they make too much and situations where they don't make any. We really don't understand that much about why this occurs particularly in humans. We work on many different aspects of repair including culturing cells on materials of varying compliance to see how they respond, because they're very mechanically sensitive and this impacts on the repair process.”

Any future research goals you’d like to share?

“My ultimate career goal is to use research to educate students and pass the torch onto the next generation. The students and trainees are the future guardians of research. Our goal is to educate and just try to move the field forward, like increasing our understanding of why people are still having their legs cut off because the skin won't heal. I think by understanding that, hopefully we can change treatment plans. Ultimately, having a clinical impact is the goal. If you can get to a point where your research program actually influences something in the clinic, that’s great, but that can also be done in other ways, such as having students in your lab who themselves go on and become clinician scientists. If you don'trealize that the traineesarethe key focus and should be front and center in dissemination of lab results, you've missed the point of academic research in my opinion. ”

Professor (Cross Appointment with Dentistry)

More about his research https://bit.ly/DHamiltonInfo

Contact Info

douglas.hamilton@schulich.uwo.ca (519) 661-2111 Ext. 58194

“it’s very easy to stay in a comfort zone, but it’s much harder to challenge yourself to try something which you wouldn’t have normally considered.”

What was an important step you took for your career?

“When I first went into my undergrad, I was actually going to do Marine biology. I discovered that there really weren’ta lot of jobs in that fieldand it wasn't as interestingas I thought.At the time, I was doing a lot of courses in second year university on molecular biology and physiology, which were more relevant to humans, so I ended up doing a major in cell and molecular biology. Later, I interviewed for a couple of jobs and ended up instead going to do a PhD. I think sometimes people get stuck in a position of thinking, ‘Well, that's just what I'm going to do’ . No, you can do anything you want if you have the drive. One of the key things I always teach my students is persistence.If you want to do something, persist and you're more likely to be successful. I was very fortunate to have some amazing mentors. I learned a ton of different lessonsfrom each one of them, whichhaveset meup as who Iam.I think it was also about challenging myself to work with an engineer, then in a dental faculty, and every time I went somewhere new, they worked with something I hadn't worked with before.”

“It’s an inherent desire to understand how things work and how systems work together. With cell biology, I'm just thoroughly fascinated by cells and understanding what cell are capable of doing. I've always had thisdiscovery bulb; that’s what Jeff Dixon, a professorinphyspharm used to call it. You can see people have this discovery bug where they want to figure out how something works and why it does what it does. I didn’t necessarily come straight through to research. But once I started my PhD and it just took over me. My PhD, it opened my eyes. I was kind of different than a lot of people in that I went on to challenge myself in different areas rather than just to stay in the area where I did my PhD. I actually went and worked for a mechanical engineer for three years on vascular biomechanics. It gave me a completely different appreciation for the role of mechanics and engineering in the human body. I always try to challenge my students to move out of their comfort zone because it's very easy to stay in a comfort zone, but it's much harder to challenge yourself to try something which you wouldn't have normally considered.”

Why choose a career in cell biology?

What is your favourite thing about research?

“One of the things that always blows my mind is that you can be looking down a microscope at something and know that you right now are the only person in the world who is seeing it. I think that is quite amazing, right? Thefundamental basis of why we do what we do is because we want to be able to helppeople. There always has to be an eye onthe clinic, and with wound healing in particular this is extremely important. I mention this one all the time – the percent of the annual healthcare budgetin Canada that is spent on improper skin healing aloneis3%. I would be happy if 20 years from now another scientist or clinician picks up and revisits our work. That’s the beauty of science, you don't know when you may have an impact.”