We are pleased to announce that Associate Professor Dr. Ben Mortenson has received one of the Faculty of Medicine’s (FoM’s) Distinguished Achievement Awards (DAAs) in Overall Excellence – Mid-Career. This award recognizes “outstanding contributions in the areas of research, education, and service” by a FoM faculty member at the rank of Associate Professor.
Dr. Mortenson’s stellar program of research is a cornerstone of his contributions to UBC. He has held $7.5M in competitive funding as a Principal Investigator (PI) and $49M as a co-Investigator, and he is the first-ever FoM faculty member to lead a SSRHC Partnership Grant as the primary applicant.
This $2.5M, seven-year Partnership Grant, titled “Towards Barrier-Free Communities: A Partnership for Improving Mobility, Access and Participation (MAP) Among People with Disabilities,” includes eleven university researchers, fourteen community or business partners, ten governmental partners, three university or health authority partners, and ten other collaborators, exemplifying the collaborative nature of Dr. Mortenson’s research. Over the past four years, he has published an extraordinary 25 articles per year in high-impact journals, bringing his career total to 175, including 91 publications in which trainees under his supervision served as first authors. Last year, in recognition of his expertise, he was invited to write an article about wheeled mobility and seating systems for the 8th edition of Occupational Therapy for People Experiencing Illness, Injury or Impairment, a foundational textbook for the profession of occupational therapy.
Dr. Mortenson’s service to the profession and the university is no less remarkable than his scholarship. Last year, Dr. Mortenson was designated as an Elite Reviewer for the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation for the second straight year, placing him in the top 3% of all reviewers. Furthermore, in the past year alone he served on the editorial boards for the journals Assistive Technology, Occupational Therapy Now, and Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. He also serves on the editorial board for Spinal Cord Injury Research Evidence (SCIRE), a hub of information on spinal cord injury which has had 175,000 users and 500,000 page views over the last two years. Furthermore, he was selected from over 250 applicants to be a member of the Canadian Health Standards Organization Long-Term Care Services Standard Technical Committee, which produced new standards for the delivery of services in long-term care. In the first two weeks following their release, these standards received 77,000 social medial impressions and were reported upon more than 50 times in local and national media. Last year, Dr. Mortenson was the co-scientific chair of the inaugural World of Occupational Scientists Conference, which was hosted by the Department of OSOT at UBC, and he led a SSHRC Connection Grant to help fund the conference.
Beyond his research and service, Dr. Mortenson has contributed substantially to teaching and mentorship at UBC. In the last year alone, Dr. Mortenson supervised two MITACS GlobaLINK trainees, jointly supervised a UBC MD student‘s Flex project, and supervised 5 MOT students’ Capstone projects, bringing the total number of trainees whom he has supervised or jointly supervised to 117. One of his former postdoctoral fellows obtained a faculty position, another secured a position as a research associate, and Maya Sato-Klemm, whose project Dr. Mortenson jointly supervised, was one of ten finalists in UBC’s Undergraduate 3-Minute Thesis competition. Dr. Mortenson has also applied research to his teaching, as he received a UBC Climate Education Grant from the Equity Enhancement Fund to identify places where climate change education can be implemented into the Master of Occupational Therapy program.
The far-reaching impacts of Dr. Mortenson’s scholarship, teaching, and service have led to his widespread recognition as a leader in occupational science and occupational therapy. On April 29th, 2022, he was invited to deliver the keynote address at the University of Alberta’s Occupational Therapy Professional Development Committee annual conference, and he was additionally invited to deliver three international presentations in 2022. He was also inducted as a Fellow of the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists, the leading professional organization in occupational therapy in Canada.
Please join us in congratulating Dr. Mortenson on this prestigious award.