Suzanne Fortier's career is built on interactions. As a crystallographer, she found beauty within the inner structures of protein crystals. Now, as leader of Canada's top government funding agency for the sciences, she aims to foster interactions among government, researchers and the public. (See CV)

Growing up in Quebec at a time when children were educated in religious schools, Fortier's first exposure to science came from a nun who taught chemistry. The nun's infectious enthusiasm spurred Fortier to study science at McGill University in Montreal.

After earning her PhD at McGill, Fortier took a postdoc at the Medical Foundation of Buffalo (now the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute) in a world-class crystallography lab. She worked under Herbert Hauptman, who pioneered mathematical methods to analyse crystallographic diffraction data. In 1985, he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. “He was a fantastic mentor, very supportive and an inspiring person,” says Fortier.

In 1982, Fortier was the first woman to be hired by the department of chemistry at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. She was later cross-appointed to the department of computing when she recognized a role for artificial intelligence in determining the structure of matter.

Early in her career at Queen's, Fortier joined the Ontario Council on University Affairs, a now defunct university advisory group to the Ontario government. “I was surprised by the richness of the interactions,” she says. “I had had no interest in administration, but I learned how exciting teamwork and policy-making were.”

That experience encouraged her to make the jump from research to administration at Queen's in the mid-1990s, where she became vice-principal (research) and later vice-principal (academic). She missed research and teaching, but found that contributing to the institution as a whole provided a sense of accomplishment. “As administrators, we are there to serve our community,” she says. “The success of others is what has to motivate you.”

After 11 years as vice-principal, Fortier moved to Ottawa in January to head the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. Her aim is to encourage the success of researchers while also enhancing communication between them and the Canadian public. “It's a goal of all our universities to be players on the world stage,” she says, “so how can we all work together to achieve that?”