Principal Daniel Woolf is pleased to announce that Qingling Duan and Keren Zaiontz are the newest Queen’s National Scholars (QNS).

“Both Dr. Duan and Dr. Zaiontz are promising scholars who have demonstrated a dedication to teaching and a capacity to undertake exceptional interdisciplinary research,” says Principal Woolf. “I am very pleased to welcome them to the university as our newest Queen’s National Scholars and am confident they will make a significant impact within their departments.”

Dr. Duan has been appointed Queen’s National Scholar in Bioinformatics and is jointly appointed to the Department of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences and the School of Computing. Her research focuses on improving responses to drug treatments through the insights gained from biomedical and genomic data. She was previously an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School and an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences at Queen’s. She earned her doctorate in human genetics from McGill University.

Dr. Zaiontz joins the Department of Film and Media where she has been appointed Queen’s National Scholar in Creative Industries in the Global City. Her research investigates how artists are not only driving economic growth in cities but reconfiguring urban space through performance actions that articulate pressing social justice issues. Prior to joining Queen’s, Dr. Zaiontz was a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at the University of London and a Banting fellow at Simon Fraser University. She holds a PhD in drama, theatre, and performance studies from the University of Toronto.

The QNS program was first established in 1985, with the objective to “enrich teaching and research in newly developing fields of knowledge as well as traditional disciplines.” Since then, over 100 QNS appointments have been made in a wide variety of disciplines, and the appellation of Queen’s National Scholar has become synonymous with academic excellence.

The program provides $100,000 annually for five years for each appointment, and funding for the program allows for a maximum of two QNS appointments in each annual competition. The 2015-16 round of the Queen’s National Scholar program is currently open, and academic units have been invited to submit expressions of interest (EOI) to their respective dean’s office by Sept. 8.