When the call first came through, Tohid Didar ignored it. He was in the middle of a meeting with the associate dean of research and didn't want to be interrupted.
"I remember being confused because it has been years since someone called my office phone," the associate professor of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering recalls. "I thought it might be someone offering me a new internet package."
Tohid Didar, Associate Professor
Moments later, the phone rang again. This time, he answered it.
"The president would like to speak with you," said the voice on the other end.
Turns out, it wasn't a telemarketing call after all it was the president of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) calling to tell Didar he had won the Arthur B. McDonald Fellowship (formerly the E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowships), a rare distinction awarded to only a handful of exceptional researchers nationwide.
Validation after decades of hard work
Each year, only six researchers across Canada are selected for this distinction, which celebrates transformative contributions to the natural sciences and engineering.
Funded by NSERC, the fellowship provides recipients with $250,000 in research funding and up to $180,000 to their university to release them from teaching and administrative duties over two years. This support enables fellows to expand their labs, grow their research programs and position themselves as the next generation of leaders in their fields.
"The researchers awarded Arthur B. McDonald Fellowships represent the future of Canadian innovation," says Heather Sheardown, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering.
"We are so proud of Tohid's accomplishments and the work he is doing to engineer solutions to some of the world's biggest problems."
For Didar, that call was more than good news it was validation after years of persistence, curiosity and leadership. "It gives you the energy to move forward and keep working," he says.
But celebration quickly gave way to reflection and renewed purpose. "As a researcher, it's important to keep an eye on what the needs of society are, and rise to tackle those challenges," says Didar.
"Now, the biggest question for me is, What's next? How can this support help us push boundaries and create technologies that make a real difference in people's lives?"
Thinking small to solve big problems
Inside Didar's lab, big things are happening on a nano scale.
One of his most ambitious research platforms is reimagining how we think about food safety. His team has developed an intelligent food packaging material called SentinelWrap that can detect pathogens in real time without opening the package.
They've also developed an AI-enabled app that predicts the freshness of food.
And his partnership with Toyota Tsusho Canada, supported through NSERC Alliance and Mitacs grants, is helping to take these technologies from the lab and put them in the hands of consumers.
"Access to safe food is a basic human right," says Didar. "By developing technologies that reduce food waste and prevent illness, we're demonstrating how innovation in our lab can translate into meaningful societal impact."
That same drive to make a real difference in the world drives all of Didar's work. A different project, aiming to improve women's health by creating wearable diagnostic and treatment tools, led to the development and licensing of a flushable, biodegradable menstrual gel designed for use in menstrual cups.
And a third platform tackles the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance through the development of pathogen-repelling nanomaterials, antimicrobial sprays, medical implants and catheters with built-in infection resistance.
To outsiders, these research platforms may seem wildly different from one another. But Didar doesn't see it that way.
"All of my research is connected by one principle, and that's designing smart, deployable materials and devices to solve biological problems that have societal impact," explains Didar.
"This is what I call sustainable solutions' - it's something that doesn't rely only on economic return on investment, but also on environmental and societal return."
And when that principle is combined with his emphasis on bringing an entrepreneurial edge to his research projects, Didar's vision for his work comes into view: He wants his work in people's hands, he explains, not confined to academic journals.
Sustainable solutions at work
For Didar, even a doorknob can spark a breakthrough.
It starts with a simple premise that we're all familiar with: When you sneeze into your hand and reach for a door handle, he explains, your germs travel with you, meaning the next person who touches the same surface will pick them up and carry them forward. This chain of transmission is how countless infections begin.
This problem led to the development of RepelWrap, a bio-inspired, pathogen-repelling nanomaterial that prevents bacteria from clinging to surfaces not by killing them, but by keeping them from sticking in the first place.
Most cleaning sprays, Didar explains, are designed to kill bacteria. The problem is that, over time, bacteria learn to adapt and resist the sprays, becoming harder to destroy.
RepelWrap offers a gentler, smarter alternative. It forms a microscopic shield on the surface, so the germs stay where they started instead of spreading across doorknobs, elevator buttons or railings.
This technology grew out of Didar's work at FendX Technologies, a publicly traded nanotechnology company he co-founded to develop materials designed to keep surfaces clean. Here, Didar has helped scale up and commercialize these novel technologies, ensuring his team's breakthroughs in the lab are translated into real-world health care solutions.
"As researchers, we discover to deploy," explains Didar. "Innovations can't only be published in papers they need to reach the people who need them most."
A legacy in the making
For someone still considered an early-stage researcher, Didar's career already reads like that of a seasoned academic leader. After earning his B.Sc. from the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, he completed a Ph.D. at McGill University, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University's Wyss Institute. He started his independent career at McMaster in 2016.
Today, he holds a Canada Research Chair in Nano-biomaterials, leading a lab that's caught the attention of major news outlets, including CNN, BBC and CBC.
He was recently inducted as a fellow into the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, recognizing his contributions at the intersection of engineering, medicine and entrepreneurship.
And the students he has mentored and trained have gone on to be Vanier Scholars, Governor General gold medalists and Banting awardees.
But rather than look back on his various achievements, Didar is more concerned with where he's going next.
"Two things really matter to me right now," he says.
"The first is seeing my trainees grow and become leaders in their field, and the second is creating something that impacts people's lives in a positive way.
"If I'm fortunate enough to see something I've created become part of people's everyday lives, that would be the greatest reward."
It's this vision of the future that keeps him going, through failed experiments, setbacks and the unpredictable nature of research and entrepreneurship.
It's this desire to change the world that keeps him coming up with innovative solutions to the world's biggest problems.
And it's this same drive to do meaningful work that made him an Arthur B. McDonald Fellow.
When he's asked to reflect on his career and what this award means to him, Didar's answer is simple: "I just want to be known as somebody who never gave up."
