A STEM Trailblazer: Shohini Ghose honoured for contributions to science policy

Oct. 2, 2025

Shohini Ghose, a professor of Physics and Computer Science at Wilfrid Laurier University, is being honoured with the 2025 Trailblazer Award in Policy for Science from the Canadian Science Policy Centre (CSPC). Trailblazer Awards recognize individuals who have positively and significantly impacted science, technology, innovation and society in Canada, boldly spearheading change while blazing a trail and inspiring others to follow.

“Dr. Ghose was selected as the recipient of this award because of her transformative impact on the inclusion of EDI and the role of visible minority women in science and quantum physics,” says Mehrdad Hairi, CEO and president of CSPC. “This has been demonstrated both nationally and internationally through her initiative to pioneer the Laurier Centre for Women in Science, the development of the Dimensions Charter for EDI and her contributions on UNESCO’s International Basic Sciences Programme Scientific Advisory Board.”

Ghose is an award-winning physicist and author and the chief technology officer at the Quantum Algorithms Institute. Her research focuses on developing quantum technologies that could transform healthcare, cybersecurity, finance and other sectors. Ghose’s work has been published in leading journals, including Nature, and she has given more than 200 invited talks at conferences and events worldwide.

CSPC celebrated Ghose’s contributions to “Policy for Science” – influencing public policy to create supportive conditions for scientific innovation. As a recognized leader in her field, Ghose was named to Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada's Quantum Advisory Council and helped develop the country’s first National Quantum Strategy. Ghose is one of five Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Chairs for Women in Science and Engineering working to connect and promote women in STEM, and was the first person of colour to serve as president of the Canadian Association of Physicists. After co-founding Laurier’s Centre for Women in Science in 2013, her advocacy helped create Dimensions, the first national program to enhance EDI in Canadian institutions.

Ghose has influenced the international STEM community as a member of UNESCO’s prestigious International Basic Sciences Programme Scientific Advisory Board and as the first Canadian member of the Women in Physics Working Group of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP). She chaired the first North American IUPAP International Conference on Women in Physics in Waterloo in 2014, which attracted delegations from 52 countries. The resulting Waterloo Charter of resolutions for EDI in physics was officially adopted by more than 60 countries around the world.

Ghose has been appointed to the College of the Royal Society of Canada, as a Fellow of the Canadian Association of Physicists, and received a TED Senior Fellowship. She is an accomplished science communicator whose online talks have accumulated more than five million views. Ghose’s book, Her Space, Her Time: How Trailblazing Women Scientists Decoded the Hidden Universe, won the 2023 Science Writers and Communicators of Canada Book Award.

A ceremony celebrating winners of the 2025 Trailblazer Awards will take place at the Canadian Science Policy Conference in Ottawa in November.