I am delighted to join CIFAR’s interdisciplinary community as a Global Scholar and to become part of the Child & Brain Development program. This is a meaningful opportunity to develop my research on how adversity and inequality shape children’s brain and behavioural development, while also asking what enables resilience.
Dr Divyangana Rakesh, Lecturer in Neuroscience and Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience.
19 May 2026
Dr Divyangana Rakesh joins CIFAR Global Scholars Program
Dr Divyangana, Lecturer in Neuroscience and Psychology, is one of 15 scholars from across the globe selected to join the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Global Scholars program as part of their Next-Generation initiative.
The CIFAR Global Scholars program empowers early-career researchers to strive for global impact by supporting opportunities for leadership development and championing bold ideas through global, interdisciplinary collaboration.
Dr Rakesh will join the Child & Brain Development program, which examines the effect of the early environment on the lifelong trajectory going from childhood to old age of physical, mental and social health and wellbeing.
Her research uses developmental cognitive neuroscience to study how environmental adversity and inequality become biologically embedded in the developing brain. Drawing on large-scale neuroimaging datasets, her research examines how poverty, neighbourhood disadvantage and macroeconomic inequality shape brain development, cognitive function, academic outcomes and mental health in children and adolescents. Her work also looks at resilience, asking what protects children from the effects of disadvantage.
"CIFAR’s emphasis on bold, collaborative research offers an exceptional opportunity to connect my research with broader perspectives on society, policy and human development. I am especially grateful for the chance to be part of such an extraordinary international community, to exchange ideas across disciplines, and to build collaborations that can expand the scope and impact of this work,” commented Dr Rakesh.
This Next-Generation Initiative enables early-career researchers to expand their professional networks and pursue cutting-edge ideas with CAD $100,000 of unrestricted research funding. The researchers also become full members of a CIFAR research program, gaining access to international networks, mentorship and opportunities for deep interdisciplinary collaboration.
“Early-career researchers are at the stage where community, mentorship and support can absolutely change the trajectory and impact of their research,” said Rachel Parker, Head of Next-Generation Initiatives. “Through CIFAR’s Next-Gen programming, such as CIFAR Global Scholars program, we are creating space for these exceptional researchers to conduct meaningful collaboration across disciplines and geographies, take bold steps in their research and grow as leaders within a global research community.”
The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) is a globally influential research organization based in Canada. They aim to mobilize the world’s most brilliant people across disciplines and at all career stages to advance transformative knowledge and solve humanity’s biggest problems.
Through its 15 research programs and the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy, CIFAR convenes more than 500 of the world’s top researchers from over 160 institutions in 23 countries. This community has included 26 Nobel Prize laureates, 4 Turing Award winners, 37 recipients of the Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering and 2 recipients of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada) Gold Medal.
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Lecturer in Neuroscience and Psychology