Professor Mark Lautens, an organic chemist, holds the prestigious rank of University Professor and is the AstraZeneca Professor of Organic Synthesis. He is currently the Chair of the Department of Chemistry. He holds a Bachelor of Science and an Honorary Doctor of Science, from the University of Guelph and a PhD from the University Wisconsin-Madison. He was a Post Doctoral Fellow at Harvard University. Professor Lautens is an Officer of the Order of Canada, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK), and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He has held numerous Visiting Professorship and Lectureships at a number of global universities. Professor Lautens is also a public intellectual, publishing many articles in The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star on a wide variety of subjects. He is also in his second year of his final three-year term as a teaching staff member of the Governing Council. He has served on a range of governance bodies during his tenure, including the Executive Committee and the Planning & Budget Committee (of which he is currently Chair). Professor Lautens brings to the Search Committee a well-informed perspective on graduate education, the research enterprise and the federal granting councils.