Kirsty Duncan
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The Honourable Kirsty Duncan PC MP |
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| Minister of Science | |
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Assumed office November 4, 2015 |
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| Prime Minister | Justin Trudeau |
| Preceded by | Ed Holder |
| Member of the Canadian Parliament for Etobicoke North |
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Assumed office October 14, 2008 |
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| Preceded by | Roy Cullen |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Kirsty Ellen Duncan October 31, 1966 Etobicoke, Ontario |
| Political party | Liberal |
| Profession | Medical geographer, professor, politician |
| Website | Official website |
Kirsty Ellen Duncan PC MP (born October 31, 1966) is a Canadian politician and medical geographer from Ontario, Canada. Duncan is the Member of Parliament (MP) for the Liberal Party of Canada in the Toronto riding of Etobicoke North and was appointed Minister of Science, on the advice of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, on November 4, 2015. She is also currently an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto and has published a book about her 1998 expedition to uncover the cause of the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic.
After graduating from Kipling Collegiate Institute in 1985 as an Ontario Scholar, Duncan studied geography and anthropology at the University of Toronto. She then entered graduate school at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and completed a Ph.D. in geography in 1992.
From 1993 to 2000, Duncan taught meteorology, climatology and climate change at the University of Windsor. In 1992, as she became aware of the increasing probability of a global flu crisis, she was led to investigate the cause of the similar 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, saying, "I was horrified we didn’t know what caused [Spanish flu], and also knew that if we could find fragments of the virus, we might be able to find a better flu vaccine".
Though at the time she "knew nothing about influenza", she began what she called a "six-month crash course in virology". Eventually, she began searching for possible frozen samples of lung and brain tissue that might contain the virus. Her initial thoughts led her to think of Alaska, as it contains large areas of permafrost, which would leave the viruses intact, but the search proved fruitless.
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