Katherine L.B. Borden, PhD, FRSC, FCAHS, Professor, Université de Montréal; Investigator Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer and Canada Research Chair in Molecular Biology of the Cell Nucleus. She received her PhD from Yale University in protein biophysics with Fred Richards and postdoctoral training in structural and cancer biology at The Crick Institute (formerly NIMR) and Cancer Research UK (formerly the Imperial Cancer Fund) in London. Her work focusses on understanding the mechanisms and impact of dysregulated RNA metabolism in cancer. She studies the eukaryotic translation initiation factor eIF4E as an exemplar. Her studies unearthed novel modes by which cancer cells hijack genetic information, in the form of messenger RNA, and demonstrated new mechanisms by which RNA maturation and RNA export influence cell physiology and support cancer growth. Her molecular snapshots elucidated new mechanisms for regulation and engagement of these steps. These findings drove first-in-class clinical trials demonstrating that targeting eIF4E and relevant RNA processing events represents a highly promising avenue for the development of novel therapeutics. These studies also revealed novel modes of drug resistance and showed these were targetable in patients. These achievements have been recognized by several awards including the Stohlman Scholar award from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society USA, 3 term Tier 1 Canada Research Chair, Distinguished Scientist of the Canadian Society for Clinical Investigation, CSMB Canadian Science Publishing Senior Investigator Award and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences amongst others. She has over 150 publications and given more than 160 invited lectures. She also founded and chairs the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion committee at her institute.