Dr. Alastair E. Cribb was appointed dean of Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University in 2019.
Dr. Cribb earned his D.V.M. at Western College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan in 1984 and completed a small animal internship at Michigan State University in 1985.
He spent two years in rural community practice in the Canadian Maritimes, working with food animals, horses, companion animals and wildlife. He then returned to academia, obtaining his Ph.D. in pharmacogenetics and clinical pharmacology at the University of Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Faculty of Medicine at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1992, then spent four years in drug safety assessment with Merck & Co. in Pennsylvania.
In 1996, Dr. Cribb joined the Atlantic Veterinary College at the University of Prince Edward Island. During his tenure at AVC, he first held a Medical Research Council New Investigator award and then a Canada Research Chair in Comparative Pharmacology and Toxicology. He established the Prince Edward Island Health Research Institute and served on the task force that led to the creation of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).
Appointed the founding dean of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Calgary in 2006 and to a second five-year term as dean in 2011, Dr. Cribb grew the veterinary medicine program from a small start-up working out of a few offices to a dynamic program with approximately 75 faculty, 100 staff, and 250 students. Dr. Cribb joined Cummings School after most recently serving as a professor of clinical pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Calgary.
Through his research, Dr. Cribb has worked to create an understanding of individual and species differences in response to drug administration. His primary research interests are in comparative clinical pharmacology, comparative molecular toxicology, and comparative pharmacogenetics. He has published more than 80 scientific publications on these topics.