Dr. Harvey Max Chochinov is a Professor of Psychiatry, Community Health Sciences, and Family Medicine (Division of Palliative Care), University of Manitoba, and Director of the Manitoba Palliative Care Research Unit, CancerCare Manitoba. He holds the only Canada Research Chair in Palliative Care and is a member of the Governing Council of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. He also chairs the CIHR’s Standing Committee on Ethics. He did his undergraduate medical training and Psychiatric Residency at the University of Manitoba and completed a Fellowship in Psychiatric Oncology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York. In 1998, he completed a PhD in the Faculty of Community Health Sciences, University of Manitoba.

Dr. Chochinov has been doing palliative care research since 1990, and is a grantee of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the National Institute of Health. His work has explored various psychiatric dimensions of palliative medicine, such as depression, desire for death, will to live and dignity at the end of life. This research served as the basis for his testimony to the Senate of Canada's Special Committee on Euthanasia and Assisted-Suicide in October 1994 and again in February 2000.

Dr. Chochinov has been a guest lecturer in most major academic institutions throughout Canada and United States; he has also lectured in South America, New Zealand, Australia, Europe, China and Japan.  He is the only psychiatrist in Canada to be designated as a Soros Faculty Scholar, Project on Death in America.  In addition to over 130 publications, he is the Co- Editor of the Handbook of Psychiatry in Palliative Medicine, published by Oxford University Press, and the Journal Palliative and Support Care, published by Cambridge University Press. He is a recipient of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal and his provinces’ highest honour, the Order of Manitoba, for his work in palliative care. He is the winner of the Canadian Psychiatric Association’s JM Cleghorn Award for excellence and leadership in clinical research. He was recently named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.