Canadian Immigrant - November 2023

PROFILE
AT THE FOREFRONT OF
C A NCER R E S E A R C H
By Lisa Evans
Chinese-Canadian
Dr. Housheng He
is an award-winning
scientist making significant
contributions to the
study of cancer
Dr. Housheng He spent his childhood summers working in
the fields in a small village in China.
“We had to get up very early in the morning at 5 or 6 a.m., go to
the farm and work until 9 or 10 a.m., have breakfast then go back
to the farm and work again,” he says.
Dr. He’s hard work paid off as it instilled in him a strong work
ethic as well as lessons in planning and working as a team.
“Although it was very hard and we were sweating all the time,
when I look back, it’s a time that I learned how to work together
with others to complete a complicated task. I learned that you
have to work hard to get what you want,” he says.
Throughout his career, when faced with a hard task, Dr. He
thinks back to that time on the farm. “Nothing actually looks
hard compared to those summers,” he jokes.
This humble beginning laid the foundation for a remarkable
journey that has seen Dr. He evolve into an award-winning
scientist making significant contributions to the study of cancer.
These days, Dr. He can be found in his research lab at
Princess Margaret Cancer Centre where he is a senior scientist,
or teaching at the University of Toronto in the department of
medical biophysics. As an experimental and computational
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CANADIAN IMMIGRANT Volume 20 Issue 5 | 2023