Maurice Bitran
Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy
Biography
Dr. Maurice Bitran was the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Science Officer of the Ontario Science Centre, the most visited science centre in Canada and an international leader in informal science education. He led the centre from 2014-2019, following wide-ranging careers in government and academia.
As an Assistant Deputy Minister in the Ontario Government, Maurice led the provincial portfolios on: Environmental Policy (including Climate Change and the Great Lakes); Economic Development Policy and Programs (including the Next Generation of Jobs Fund and the Advanced Manufacturing Investment Strategy); the Premier’s Jobs and Prosperity Council: and was Ontario’s Chief Negotiator for the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with the European Union. He was also the Executive Director of the Ontario Research and Development Challenge Fund.
He is currently an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto, and has had academic appointments at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Toronto, the Astronomy Department of the University of Florida, the Astronomy Department of the University of Chile, and at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
Maurice serves on the boards of the Association of Science and Technology Centres (ASTC) and Tourism Toronto, and is a past member of the boards of Ontario Genomics and the Canadian Association of Science Centres.
A native of Chile, Maurice was selected as one of the Ten most influential Hispanic-Canadians in 2012, received the Public Service Award from Life Sciences Ontario in 2013, and the Leadership Award from the Transformation Institute for Leadership Innovation in 2019. He holds a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Florida (USA) and is fluent in English, French, and Spanish.