Dr. Michael Baird graduated from McMaster in 1962 as the senior class president and as one of the top university sprinters in the country. In fact, he was inducted into the McMaster Athletics Hall of Fame in 1997. Dr. Baird is now an emeritus professor in the Department of Chemistry at Queen’s University where he has served on faculty since 1967 and continues to carry out externally funded research. During his time at Queen’s, he has built an international reputation for his research in organometallic chemistry, his contributions to the field including the development of novel protocols for synthesizing and studying many of the thermally unstable compounds involved in his research along with making significant advances in the study of catalysts which are important to the chemical, petrochemical and pharmaceutical industries.
With more than 250 peer-reviewed publications and ten patents, Dr. Baird has received many significant awards including the Catalysis Lecture Award of the Canadian Catalysis Foundation and the Catalysis Award and the Alcan Lecture Award from the Chemical Institute of Canada, which also elected him a Fellow of the Institute. He has received the Queen’s University Prize for Excellence in Research, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2003. Dr. Baird has served his profession as a member of several NSERC committees and as a member of the editorial boards of the Canadian Journal of Chemistry, Organometallics and Inorganic Chemistry Communications.
More than simply an outstanding researcher, Dr. Baird is also a decorated teacher who won the Chemistry Department Student Council Prize for Excellence in Teaching a record five times at Queen’s. He also coached the Queen’s track team and was one of the inaugural inductees into the Queen’s Athletics Coaches Hall of Fame in 2003.
