Dr. Martin McKeown is the PPRI/UBC chair in Parkinson’s Research, director at the Pacific Parkinson’s Research Centre (PPRC), professor in the department of medicine, and adjunct professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at the University of British Columbia. The PPRC is deemed an International Centre of Excellence by the National Parkinson’s Foundation (US-NPF).

He did his engineering physics, medicine, and neurology training at McMaster, University of Toronto, and Western University, respectively. He did a three-year research fellowship at the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego before being hired as an assistant professor of medicine and biomedical engineering at Duke University. He was recruited to UBC in 2003.

Dr. McKeown has been responsible for a variety of peer-reviewed research projects funded through the National Institute of Health (US-NIH), US-NPF, Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), International Association of Translational Neuroscience, and Whitaker Foundation. He was a member of the Neuroscience A (NSA) Canadian CIHR Scientific peer review committee, as well as a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Parkinson’s Society of Canada. He is currently the medical advisor to the Parkinson’s Society of B.C. Dr. McKeown has authored over 200 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters.

His interests include examining novel treatments for Parkinson’s and exploring how engineering methods can be used to enrich the lives of people with Parkinson’s. In addition to seeing patients, Dr. McKeown supervises graduate students in neuroscience and engineering, and trains the next generation of doctors.