engineering

Molly Shoichet

Molly Shoichet is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Molly Shoichet rather than just read about it. In short: Molly S. Shoichet is a Canadian science professor at the University of Toronto specializing in chemistry, biomaterials and biomedical engineering.

Key takeaways

Molly Shoichet belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Molly Shoichet to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Molly Shoichet from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Molly S. Shoichet is a Canadian science professor at the University of Toronto specializing in chemistry, biomaterials and biomedical engineering. She was Ontario's first Chief Scientist. Shoichet is a biomedical engineer known for her work in tissue engineering, and is the only person to be a fellow of the three National Academies in Canada.

Education Shoichet studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received her bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1987. She attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst for her doctoral studies and earned her PhD in polymer science and engineering in 1992.

Career After receiving her doctorate, Shoichet joined the faculty of Brown University as an adjunct professor, while simultaneously working in industry. Shoichet joined the University of Toronto Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering in 1995, where she remains as of 2026. Her work includes tissue and polymer engineering, focusing on drug delivery and tissue regeneration. Early in her career, she studied the blood–brain barrier. Her lab's methods involve using a gel to deliver drugs to a specific location in the central nervous system and to bypass the blood-brain barrier. The drugs delivered in this way include chemotherapy drugs and agents to slow or reverse damage from a stroke. This delivery method is also being tested with stem cells, and include studies on the use of hydrogels that deliver stem cells to nonfunctioning retinas. These hydrogels are designed to be easily injectable into the tissue and they then form a scaffold for cells to grow in the appropriate three-dimensional shape. In 2015, Shoichet co-founded Research2Reality to showcase scientific research in Canada through a combination of accessible blog posts and short videos. She has also curated the "Artful Science" exhibit at the Toronto Pearson International Airport. In November 2017, Shoichet was named as Ontario's first Chief Scientist by then Premier Kathleen Wynne. She was leading a team of six to build connections between the federal government, science and business sectors, and promote the use of evidence in policy development. On 3 July 2018, Shoichet was dismissed from her position by the newly elected Conservative government of Ontario when the office of chief scientist was eliminated.

Honours and awards In 2010, Shoichet was one of 30 people to be awarded the Order of Ontario. Shoichet was the North American recipient of the L'Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science in 2015 for her work on regeneration of nerve tissue, and in developing direct drug delivery methods for the spinal cord and brain using novel materials. She has advocated for women in science and women professors. The University of Toronto designated her a "University Professor" in 2014. She is the only person to be a fellow of the three National Academies in Canada. The University of Toronto also honored her in 2013 as an "Inventor of the Year". She is the 2017 winner of the Kalev Pugi Award of the Chemical Institute of Canada. She holds the Canada Research Chair in Tissue Engineering. In 2017, she was also awarded the Killam Prize for engineering. She was awarded Officer of the Order of Canada (OC) as per Government House of 29 December 2017. In 2020, she was the winner of the Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering, awarded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

Other honours Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (2013) Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal (2013) Fellow, Canadian Academy of Sciences of the Royal Society of Canada Fellow, Canadian Academy of Engineering Fellow, Canadian Academy of Health Sciences Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERMIS) Senior Scientist Award (2014) Fellow, Royal Society UK Fellow, National Academy of Inventors

Personal life Her brother, Brian Shoichet, is a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, where he serves as Co-Vice Dean of Graduate Pharmacy Education Programs and faculty in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Molly Shoichet

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Molly Shoichet claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Molly Shoichet before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Molly Shoichet ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Molly Shoichet

In research: Molly Shoichet appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Molly Shoichet in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Molly Shoichet is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1965 births, 20th-century Canadian chemists, 20th-century Canadian engineers, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Molly Shoichet outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Molly Shoichet in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Molly Shoichet means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Molly Shoichet out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Molly Shoichet in simple terms?

Molly S. Shoichet is a Canadian science professor at the University of Toronto specializing in chemistry, biomaterials and biomedical engineering.

Why does Molly Shoichet matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Molly Shoichet?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Molly Shoichet.