Associate Director, Providence Heart + Lung Institute at St Paul’s Hospital.
Dr. Bai is an Internist and Respirologist at St. Paul’s Hospital and a Professor with the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia (UBC). He is currently head of the Respiratory Division at Providence Health Care and associate director (Lung) of the newly formed Providence Heart and Lung Institute at St Paul’s. Dr. Bai earned his medical degree from the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand in 1976. His internal medicine and respirology training was combined between two sites: Wellington Clinic School of Medicine in N.Z. and St. Thomas Hospital Medical School in London, England. He completed a Ph D equivalent thesis in airway physiology and pharmacology from the University of Otago, which included a two year research fellowship in airways disease at the Meakins Christie Laboratories at McGill University in 1984. He was on the faculty of the University of Auckland School of Medicine 1984 to 1990 until he joined the faculty at UBC in 1990. He was fi rst a BC Health care and then MRC funded clinician scientist for 10 years. Dr. Bai has researched the underlying mechanisms and causes of asthma for over 25 years. Dr. Bai is a member of the Canadian asthma guidelines committee, and has been a member of several Federal committees, including the CIHR respiratory committee and the Federal Government Task Force on Asthma. He received a Killam Memorial Faculty Research Fellowship to complete a one year sabbatical at the Groningen Institute for asthma research at the University Medical Center Groningen, The Netherlands, in 2005.
Dr. Bai has authored more than 120 full length publications focused on airway biology and determinants of asthma severity. He has had continuous support from the MRC/CIHR for more than 15 years. Currently Dr Bai is project leader for a three year CIHR/ALLERGEN network of Centers of Excellence group grant at the James Hogg iCAPTURE center evaluating the influence of, and interaction between, respiratory viruses and particulate air pollution in the repair process in damaged asthmatic airway epithelium. He also currently holds grants to investigate the pathogenic role of airway remodelling in asthma, conducts clinical trials in patients with asthma focussed on the role of infl ammatory markers in modulating therapy, and is evaluating nutritional modulation of asthmatic airway inflammation.