Arthur Carty, enterprising scientist, visionary research leader and storyteller par excellence, is president of the National Research Council (NRC). Since it was established during the First World War to promote industrial progress, the NRC has racked up an impressive collection of accomplishments, such as hardy prairie wheat and canola, and key medical work on a vaccine for tuberculosis and radiation therapy for cancer.
Under Carty's leadership, the NRC has assumed an important role in the growing partnerships between large corporations and universities. After his appointment in 1994, Carty helped usher in the Ottawa Venture in Training Engineers and Scientists in Software Engineering program (O-Vitesse), which enabled science graduates to qualify as software engineers in less than two years.
Carty's own speciality is chemistry, a field in which he has written extensively. In 1975, he became the first director of the Guelph-Waterloo Centre for Graduate Work in Chemistry, and later taught in the University of Waterloo's Department of Chemistry. He went on to become the department's director and the university's dean of research.
Today, Carty serves on the governing council of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, and belongs to the boards of the Canadian Stroke Network and the Mathematics of Information Technology and Complex Systems Network. Carty's work has been recognized by numerous honours.