Dr. Leslie Roos is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Manitoba and one of Canada’s most cited scientists. He is a founding director of the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy which performs a major public service by allowing public policy to be informed and verified by its information rich data. For almost 30 years, Dr. Roos has pioneered new ways to do research with population based data. His work on record linkage across disparate databases has been widely adopted in Canada and internationally. His leadership in creating the MCHP Data Library and the Concept Dictionary (an internet based institutional memory/learning structure) has revolutionized the training of researchers and the communication of research concepts and findings. Together, these tools make up a knowledge repository and research production system that aids local work and has great potential internationally.

Dr. Roos has mentored many graduate students and local and national researchers; teaching them to use, untangle, and understand the data housed in the MCHP. The Award is accompanied by a $1,000 bursary intended to support further training, research, or education of an emerging leader in evidence-informed health policy. Dr. Roos has designated the bursary to Elizabeth Wall-Wieler, a graduate student in Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba.