The University of British Columbia received a $350,000 gift from Dr. Yosef Wosk to establish a new annual award recognizing interdisciplinary research across the university.
The Dr. Yosef Wosk Prize in Interdisciplinary Research will provide $25,000 each year to a UBC faculty member or research team whose work brings together multiple academic disciplines, perspectives, and methodologies to address complex challenges.
The prize is designed to encourage research that extends beyond traditional academic boundaries and creates opportunities for collaboration among scholars who might not otherwise work together.
The program will initially launch through UBC’s Faculty of Education before expanding its reach across the broader university.
Eligibility will alternate between research teams that include a member of the Faculty of Education and teams involving scholars from other UBC faculties.
The structure is intended to ensure that the award supports interdisciplinary work both within education and across UBC’s wider academic community.
Wosk is a UBC alumnus, scholar, educator, author, and philanthropist whose academic and charitable work has frequently focused on interdisciplinary learning and research.
Over the course of his academic career, he has earned seven university degrees as well as two honorary doctorates.
He also spent approximately 15 years directing interdisciplinary programs at Simon Fraser University, giving him extensive experience with research and teaching that crosses conventional academic fields.
The $350,000 contribution brings Wosk’s cumulative giving to UBC to more than $1.8 million.
UBC selected Dr. Eli Puterman as the inaugural recipient of the new prize.
Puterman’s research combines health psychology, exercise science, cellular biology, epidemiology, clinical medicine, and neuroscience.
His work focuses on understanding how cumulative stress influences biological aging and long-term health outcomes.
Rather than examining stress solely from a psychological perspective, Puterman’s research integrates biological and behavioral measures to better understand how long-term exposure to stress can affect the body over time.
His collaborations extend across seven UBC faculties, reflecting the type of cross-disciplinary work the Wosk Prize is intended to recognize.
Puterman also studies how physical activity, community design, and the environments in which people live can influence health and resilience.
That work examines how factors such as access to exercise, neighborhood infrastructure, and daily movement patterns can affect both physical and mental well-being.
The new prize is intended to highlight research that addresses complex questions through multiple fields rather than relying on a single academic discipline.
By creating a recurring annual award, UBC will be able to recognize a different interdisciplinary project or researcher each year while encouraging broader collaboration across the university.
The initiative also builds on Wosk’s longstanding interest in supporting academic programs that connect ideas from different fields and bring researchers together around shared problems.
