Ellen Rukholm is currently the Director of the School of Nursing, Laurentian University. She was the innovator of graduate programs there in Nursing, Health Services and Policy and of a cardiovascular nursing graduate training program. She is principal or co-investigator for CIHR, Health Canada, Ontario Heart and Stroke and Ontario Ministry of Health research grants on cardiovascular health, hospital restructuring, nursing, interventional tele-health and inter-professional education in rural and northern contexts and has over 100 related peer reviewed publications. She chaired the committee that founded the first cardiovascular nursing peer reviewed journal in Canada (Editor, 1992-99). She received a National Award of Excellence (2003) for a web-based cardiovascular nursing course.