Sigrun Murr is a Director of Operations the Vaccine Evaluation Centre, where she drives process improvements and operational efficiencies at Canada’s first academic centre for independent vaccine research and a global leader in vaccinology, established in 1989. With over fifteen years of international business experience and ten years in operations and strategy consulting, she is passionate about and specializes in Agile, Scrum, Continuous Improvement, and Change Management. Previously, Sigrun led the digital implementation and automation of third-party contract management at a Canadian Health Authority, using Agile practices to build efficient and consistent contract management processes.

Sigrun’s doctoral research will explore how public funds can support independent vaccinology research, helping governments inform policy and public health decisions. The recent COVID-19 pandemic illustrated more rapid provision of high-quality research is needed for high quality and fast response times to emerging issues related to vaccines. Research relies on grants, which can take 12-18 months to secure, delaying the start of work and often making it too late to address local outbreaks. Sigrun will seek to determine if a framework can be developed on how vaccine research institutions can be connected to local governments, where the research institution receives funding to provide objective expert advice on all aspects of vaccine preventable diseases and informs the local government rapid and timely to support policy and public immunization programs.

Sigrun holds a Master of Business Administration in Executive Management from Royal Roads University (2015) and is a Certified Scrum Professional (CSP-SM)© from the Scrum Alliance.