Killam professor’s no ivory-tower academic
Written By: Scott Lingley
2003-01-02

“My first summer job when I was an honours zoology student was working on bighorn sheep and working on a lungworm-pneumonia disease complex that bighorn sheep in Alberta can get, that causes significant die-offs in bighorn sheep herds sometimes in severe winters," Befus said. "That’s when I became interested in the lung and inflammation in the lung and lung disease.”
Befus has taken a circuitous route to get there, but his current status as AstraZeneca Chair in Asthma Research and director of the Alberta Asthma Centre bear out the rigour with which he pursues his interests.
Befus followed his zoology degree at the University of Alberta with an MSc in parasitology from the University of Toronto, the first step in what Befus expected to be a career as a fisheries biologist. While working on his PhD at the University of Glasgow, Befus’ research brought him in contact with mucosal immunology, the study of the role of mucosal surfaces -- the lung and the gut -- in infection and disease, as well as the body’s defence mechanisms. During his post-doctoral work at McMaster University, Befus began studying the mast cell, thought to be a significant player in the body’s defence against infectious disease in the gut. As more came to be known about the mast cell, a link was made between mast cells and allergic reactions in the lung and so brought Befus full circle with his original interest in the body’s bellows.
Befus’ commitment to the scientific community, both within and outside his field of expertise, has manifested itself variously -- he’s organized conferences, chaired or presented at more than 50 national and international scientific sessions and acted as a spokesperson for the value of the Canadian contributions to scientific and medical research.
While on faculty at McMaster University he made major commitments to the Canadian Society for Immunology, serving as a science policy officer for the country and lobbying politicians in Ottawa for research funding and working to help politicians understand the importance of Canadian brain power. "And I worked for a number of years getting members of the scientific community to appreciate the importance of that kind of lobbying and communication," he said
Befus says his notion of community has been further extended by working abroad and discovering that visitor and host alike have much to learn from each other.
He became involved in the Canadian Society for International Health and developed a strong interest in community development issues in the developing world. “I worked in West Africa and Thailand and those experiences really made me begin to understand some of the issues of community development and what was known broadly as people’s knowledge, rather than ivory tower-academic knowledge," he said.
“I guess I began to appreciate that issue of people’s knowledge and what is actually known as participatory action research, and that is that we aren’t in ivory towers with all the knowledge and we don’t just go into communities and just tell people what to do because we know what’s good for them.”
His work, since assuming the directorship of the Asthma Centre, has been expressly community oriented, including the development and implementation of educational programs for children with asthma and health care professionals to develop a team-based approach to disease management.
Knowledge sharing is just as important in the lab, and Befus says the spirit of collaboration carries right over into the realm of research.
“I’ve tried to take those principles into the basic science laboratory and how one manages trainees and how one tries to educate them about their role and how they should function in teams … and not be those ivory tower kinds of individuals. So I guess that’s the kind of community philosophy I have.”
Dr. John Wallace, Professor of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at the University of Calgary, worked with Befus during his time there and affirms Befus’ commitment to the group work ethic.
“He does not direct research in his laboratory, he empowers his employees and trainees to play a very active role in directing their own work, providing advice and direction when necessary,” Wallace said. “He has been a profound influence on my own career and that of many other researchers, both in Canada and abroad.”
Befus also puts great stock in the academic community and is proud to find himself in the distinguished company of Killam Award recipients at the U of A.
“I was relatively naive about [the Killam Professorship] until I began to go through the [application] process and appreciate the magnitude of the commitment and what it’s done for people, not only at the University of Alberta but across Canada,” he said. “From a personal standpoint, it’s wonderful to be recognized within the context of your own university. It’s also a time when you reflect on what you’ve done -- for so many years, one feels that that’s just part of your job and to be acknowledged is really quite important.”
This article originally appeared in Express News.