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University of Toronto celebrates esteemed honorary graduates

November 6, 2015

TORONTO, ON – More than 4,700 stu­dents will grad­u­ate from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to at con­vo­ca­tion cer­e­monies tak­ing place from Mon­day, Novem­ber 9 to Fri­day, Novem­ber 13 in Con­vo­ca­tion Hall, 31 King’s Col­lege Cir­cle on the University’s down­town cam­pus. Up to 13,000 peo­ple are expect­ed to vis­it the Uni­ver­si­ty dur­ing con­vo­ca­tion.

As part of fall con­vo­ca­tion, U of T will con­fer hon­orary degrees on two promi­nent sci­en­tists: Nobel lau­re­ate Paul Nurse and renowned epi­demi­ol­o­gist Sir Richard Peto.

Mem­bers of the media are wel­come to attend con­vo­ca­tion cer­e­monies but are asked to con­firm their atten­dance in advance by con­tact­ing U of T media rela­tions at 416–978-0100.

The sched­ule of cer­e­monies with hon­orary grad­u­ates is as fol­lows:

  • Mon­day, Novem­ber 9 at 2:30 p.m., hon­orary grad­uand Sir Paul Nurse. He is renowned for his land­mark con­tri­bu­tions to cell biol­o­gy, and his lead­er­ship of some of the world’s most pres­ti­gious research orga­ni­za­tions. His role in iden­ti­fy­ing the pro­tein mol­e­cules that con­trol the divi­sion of cells earned him the 2001 Nobel Prize in Phys­i­ol­o­gy or Med­i­cine, which he shared with Lee Hartwell and Tim Hunt. Their break­through dis­cov­ery has led to sig­nif­i­cant advances in med­i­cine, biol­o­gy and can­cer research over the past 25 years. Nurse was pres­i­dent of the Rock­e­feller Uni­ver­si­ty from 2003 to 2010, and cur­rent­ly serves as pres­i­dent of the Roy­al Soci­ety and direc­tor and chief exec­u­tive of the Fran­cis Crick Insti­tute in Lon­don.
  • Wednes­day, Novem­ber 11 at 6:00 p.m., hon­orary grad­uand Sir Richard Peto. Over the past 20 years, Sir Richard Peto of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford has been the most influ­en­tial epi­demi­ol­o­gist in the world. His stud­ies on tobac­co and chron­ic dis­ease risk fac­tors, large-scale clin­i­cal tri­als and meta-analy­ses have direct­ly con­tributed to improved patient care in Cana­da and around the world. Peto has con­duct­ed many large ran­dom­ized tri­als of now com­mon­ly-used treat­ments, and sev­er­al large col­lab­o­ra­tive meta-analy­ses of all avail­able tri­als that have changed world­wide prac­tice in a num­ber of areas, includ­ing chemother­a­py and radio­ther­a­py.

For more infor­ma­tion about indi­vid­ual cer­e­monies, please vis­it convocation.utoronto.ca.

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For more infor­ma­tion, con­tact:
U of T Media Rela­tions
416–978-0100
media.relations@utoronto.ca
#UofTGrad15