Kimberly Strong
Acting Vice-Dean, Graduate Education
Professor, Department of Physics
Contact
Email: vicedeangraduate.artsci@utoronto.ca
Tel: 416-978-3453
Executive Assistant: Alison Terpstra
Office: SS2005, Office of the Dean, Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St. George Street
Portfolio
The Acting Vice-Dean, Graduate Education is responsible for graduate education in the Faculty of Arts & Science, including graduate enrolment planning, administration of funds to support graduate activities, graduate program development and governance matters.
Areas of Responsibility
- Graduate degree requirements
- Graduate courses and programs
- Funding to support graduate activities
- Interdisciplinary undergraduate-graduate units
- International doctoral clusters (IDC)
Biography
Professor Kimberly Strong has been a physics professor at the University of Toronto since 1996. She was Chair and Graduate Chair of the Department of Physics from 2019–2024 and Director of the School of the Environment from 2013–2018.
She has an Honours B.Sc. from Memorial University of Newfoundland and a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford, and held postdoctoral appointments at the University of Cambridge and York University. As chair, she led the Department of Physics through COVID-19 and her term included an external (UTQAP) review, development of a five-year Academic Plan and a Tri-Campus Graduate Program agreement, numerous faculty and staff hires and awards and initiatives such as the Momentum Builders Scholarship, accessible washrooms and the Physics Collaborative Research and Learning Centre.
Strong’s expertise is in atmospheric remote sounding for studies of ozone chemistry, climate and air quality. Her research interests include urban, Arctic, and planetary atmospheric science, long-term measurements of trace gases, satellite validation, and laboratory spectroscopy. She is principal investigator of the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory in Eureka, Nunavut, and coprincipal investigator of the Multidisciplinary Observatory for Arctic Climate Change and Extreme Events Monitoring at the Canadian High Arctic Research Station in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. She is also the principal investigator of the University of Toronto Atmospheric Observatory, and was a coinvestigator on the ACE and Odin satellite missions and Director of the NSERC CREATE Training Program in Arctic Atmospheric Science. Her group runs instruments affiliated with three international atmospheric observing networks, and she is a co-author on 240 articles in peer-reviewed journals.
She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Fellow of the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS), and a recipient of the Patterson Medal for Distinguished Service to Meteorology and the Royal Society of Canada’s Willet G. Miller Medal for outstanding research in atmospheric sciences.
She has served as Chair of the Board of Directors of the SNOLAB Institute (2021–24) and President of CMOS (2019–20). She is a Senior Fellow at Massey College and a Fellow of Trinity College, and holds graduate memberships in the School of the Environment and the Department of Physical & Environmental Sciences at UTSC. She has supervised 32 doctoral students, over 100 undergraduate research students, and more than 30 postdoctoral fellows and research staff and is a recipient of the International Mentorship Award from the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists and the ArcticNet Student Association.
Professor Strong was appointed Acting Vice-Dean, Graduate Education effective July 1, 2025 to December 31, 2025.