We are pleased to announce that Associate Professor Liat Margolis has been appointed both the Director of the Master of Landscape Architecture program and Associate Dean, Research, a combined role that Associate Professor Robert Wright (recently appointed Dean of the Faculty of Forestry) held in the past.
 
Margolis’s research focuses on the knowledge transfer of multi-performance materials and technologies across disciplines, particularly understanding and articulating the emerging relevance of performative landscapes as urban infrastructure. She was central to the creation of the Green Roof Innovation Testing Lab (GRIT Lab) and serves as its Director. She is also Co-Director of the Centre for Landscape Research (CLR).
 
Margolis has had tremendous success in building and attracting resources for, and garnering important attention to, the GRIT Lab. Most recently, she helped the faculty attract a Strategic Investment Fund Grant for the expansion of the GRIT Lab facilities at One Spadina. Over the past several years she has received 17 grants from government and industry sources for her research with the Lab. Margolis is also one of the only designers, and the only landscape architect to be invited to be a member of the Sustainable Canada Dialogues, a multi-disciplinary group of researchers and scholars from Universities across Canada developing white papers and advising Government on policies pertaining to sustainability and climate change.
 
Margolis’s experience and cross-disciplinary focus has prepared her well to represent both the landscape architecture program and the broader research interests of the Faculty. Her work at the GRIT Lab represents one of the Daniels Faculty’s key ambitions: to model new modes of design practice by drawing government and industry, the professions, and the academy together to undertake design-driven research focused on discovering more sustainable and resilient ways to build cities.
 
As the Associate Dean of Research, Margolis will serve to strengthen and expand the depth, breadth, and visibility of research activities at the Daniels Faculty, and help clarify the nature of research in architecture, visual studies, landscape architecture, and urban design to observers outside the Faculty. She will also advise on strategic research issues, directions, and areas of concentration for the Daniels Faculty, and develop relevant performance indicators for achieving excellence in research. Margolis will oversee the Daniels Research Coordinator and other staff entrusted with managing research applications and grant related protocols and finances, staying in close communication with U of T’s Office of Research Services and helping to cultivate relevant partnerships with other departments and disciplines at U of T and other institutions.