On July 12 and 13, 2018, UHN's new President & CEO Dr. Kevin Smith toured labs and facilities across UHN's various research institutes. The tour was led by Dr. Brad Wouters, Executive Vice President, Science and Research, along with the research institute Directors and researchers.

The first stop of the tour was the iDAPT facility at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute (TRI). Dr. Smith explored iDAPT's advanced labs, including DriverLab, a driving simulator that is being used to assess the effect of health on driving, and WinterLab, a lab that enables researchers to study weather-related falls and slipping by recreating winter conditions in a controlled environment. For this part of the tour, Dr. Smith was accompanied by TRI Director Dr. Milos Popovic, along with Drs. Geoff Fernie, Jennifer Campos, Susan Jaglal and Babak Taati.

With regenerative medicine making headlines around the world, the tour would not be complete without stopping by UHN's renowned regenerative medicine labs. Led by McEwen Centre Director Dr. Gordon Keller, these labs advance new cell therapies for disease with unmet clinical need. Dr. Smith viewed cells derived from stem cells, including beating heart muscle cells and insulin-producing cells from the labs of Drs. Michael Laflamme and Cristina Nostro, respectively.

The tour's next stop was STTARR, one of the world's largest and most advanced facilities for imaging research. Dr. David Jaffray, STTARR's Preclinical and Computational Director and UHN's EVP of Technology and Innovation, showed Dr. Smith the computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging and other cutting-edge equipment that supports studies in cancer, arthritis and other diseases.

The first day ended with a tour of the Latner Thoracic Surgery Laboratories, led by Toronto General Hospital Research Institute (TGHRI) Director Dr. Mansoor Husain. This included a discussion of the innovative lung transplantation research program led by Dr. Shaf Keshavjee.

Dr. Smith began the second day of the tour at the Princess Margaret Genomics Centreone of the world's largest genomics service providers. Princess Margaret Cancer Centre researchers Drs. Trevor Pugh, Lillian Siu and Mathieu Lupien described the importance of genomics and epigenomics in uncovering the heterogeneity of cancer.

The final stop of the tour was the Krembil Discovery Tower, where Dr. Smith toured the arthritis labs with Drs. Mohit Kapoor and Joan Wither, the neuroscience labs with Drs. James Eubanks, Cathy Barr and Aylin Reid and the vision science labs with Drs. Philippe Monnier and Michel Reber. Highlights from this part of the tour included a visit to the Krembil's flow cytometry, microscopy and virtual reality infrastructure.

The tour ended with a lively roundtable discussion with six of UHN's early and mid career scientists. The participants discussed their motivations for choosing UHN as a place to work and the factors that contribute to its international reputation for research excellence.