Veteran S&T official moves to U of O

Margaret McCuaig-Johnston is proof positive that there's life after the public service. The veteran senior civil servant has segued from a 37-career in the federal and Ontario to governments to academia where she will be putting her vast S&T expertise and knowledge of China to good use.

McCuaig-Johnston will be joining the Univ of Ottawa to take up positions with the International Office of International Research as an international relations executive focusing on partnerships with China and as a senior fellow with the Institute for Science, Society and Policy (ISSP).

Prior to accepting the positions, she was executive VP at the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), serving as chief operating officer with responsibility for research policy and international relations. But it is McCuaig-Johnston's lifelong interest in China that led to her decision to make a late-career switch.

"The three granting councils recently asked me to speak at a major Chinese conference attended by 27 Canadian and 45 Chinese universities. After that, I decided to retire from government and move to academic to use my Chinese expertise," says McCuaig-Johnston. "At U of O, I will be using all my experience which has embraced S&T to some extent in every position that I held."

The U of O will benefit from a wide-ranging career that took McCuaig-Johnston from an eight-year stint with the Ontario government to Ottawa and increasingly senior positions with the Department of Finance (innovation, S&T, energy, environment), Industry Canada (manufacturing and processing technologies), Natural Resources Canada (CanmetENERGY)

In the late 1980s and 1990s, she was on the secretariat for the National Advisory Board on Science and Technology (NABST) and director of science strategy for the (then) Department of Industry, Science and Technology (MOST) in charge of S&T policy, tech transfer and international S&T.

"U of O's international research office has a strong team and I'm looking forward to getting tom know them and what they are already doing in China," says McCuaig-Johnston. ""My connections with the Chinese Ministry of S&T and the Natural Science Foundation should be helpful."

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