Brains, Mind and Heart

Thanks to a generous donation by UBC friend and philanthropist Djavad Mowafaghian, the new Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health opened, to unite more than 200 leading researchers across all disciplines in new collaborative solutions; contributions also came from the provincial and federal government and other individual donors. The 155,000-square-foot centre is a partnership between Vancouver Coastal Health and the Faculty of Medicine and another tangible mark of UBC researchers’ 60-year globally recognized effort to understand, diagnose and treat the human brain. (By 2020 and if trends hold, brain disease and brain dysfunction will overtake cancer and heart disease as the leading cause of disability and death in Canada. The current annual cost of combatting cerebral ills is now $30 billion with one in three Canadians vulnerable. The centre hopes to reduce these odds.)