Alastair Cribb

Alastair Cribb, D.V.M., Ph.D., FCAHS, joined Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University as its fifth dean in 2019. Cribb serves as dean and is professor in the Department of Comparative Biology at Cummings School. Prior to joining Cummings School, Cribb was the founding dean of the University of Calgary Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. He also assisted with the development of other new veterinary schools. He was professor of clinical pharmacology at the Atlantic Veterinary College, where he held a Medical Research Council New Investigator Award and 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). He served on the CIHR Governing Council and was a founding fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (CAHS).

Cribb's research expertise is in veterinary and human pharmacogenetics and molecular toxicology. He has published extensively in veterinary and human literature, focusing on improving our understanding of serious but rare adverse drug reactions. His work has helped elucidate the basis of sulfonamide hypersensitivity reactions, the mechanisms of renal toxicity of drugs and chemicals, and the role of genetically determined metabolism in cancer risk.

Cribb earned his D.V.M. at Western College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Saskatchewan, in 1984 and completed a small animal internship at Michigan State University in 1985. He earned his Ph.D. in clinical pharmacology and pharmacogenetics at the University of Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children. Cribb then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Faculty of Medicine at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. From 1992 to 1996, he worked in drug safety assessment at Merck & Co. in Pennsylvania.