Celebrating Our 2025 Vanier Scholarship Winners!
Philippe Boucher, Kate Ellis and Simon Kuttner are doctoral students at Carleton University who have won a prestigious Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship.
Named after Major-General Georges P. Vanier—the first francophone Governor General of Canada—the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship is awarded to doctoral students who demonstrate academic excellence and research potential. The scholarship is valued at $50,000 per year for three years during a student’s doctoral studies. A list of the PhD students across Canada who received this scholarship for 2025 can be found here.
“Congratulations to our own Carleton doctoral recipients of a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship and to all the graduate students across Canada who are part of this select group,” says Nadeem Siddiqi, Vice-Provost of Graduate Studies at Carleton. “As Philippe, Kate, and Simon receive one of Canada’s highest academic honours, it is a recognition and reinforcement of the innovative research happening at Carleton University.”
Philippe Boucher, PhD student in Legal Studies
Philippe Boucher is focused on documenting the experience of Indigenous Peoples in Canada’s criminal courts and finding ways to improve criminal justice and ensure it reflects more Indigenous legal traditions.
Boucher is grateful to receive the scholarship to put all his energy and focus into the research.
“A lot of the criminal justice that happens in Indigenous communities, we do not necessarily know much about it and how it happens,” says Boucher. “I want to shed light on if justice is being done, what are the local initiatives and how things can be improved.”
Boucher has been named a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar for 2025 which will also fund this research.
Kate Ellis, PhD student in Communication
Kate Ellis’ research is concerned with the psychological theory of a “female autism phenotype,” or the idea that autistic women and girls inherently have different traits and experiences than their male counterparts.
Ellis notes that the under-diagnosis and late diagnosis of women and girls has often been attributed to this theory.
“In particular, I am interested in how this idea has blown up on social media and in popular media within the past few years, such as through TikTok videos listing “autism traits in girls” and female autistic protagonists in TV and movies who are celebrated for showing a “different side” of autism,” says Ellis. “I am curious about how this idea emerged, how it might be helping autistic women, girls, and gender diverse people, and how it also might be reproducing stereotypes about gender.”
As part of their research, Ellis plans to work with autistic participants to understand their perspectives on this issue. Ellis intends to make recommendations to both professionals in psychology and psychiatry as well as media producers.
Ellis also expressed surprise and gratitude upon learning about the Vanier award.
“I was shocked and overjoyed to hear that I received the Vanier! I know there are so many incredible scholars and leaders in Canadian universities, and I am very honoured to have been selected as a Vanier Scholar,” says Ellis. “The Vanier funding will support me in providing honoraria to my autistic participants and travelling to present my research in autistic community spaces and with other knowledge users, which is very important to me as I always want my research to directly benefit the autistic community.”
Simon Kuttner, PhD student in Mathematics
Simon Kuttner’s research explores the structure and properties of polynomial over finite fields, with applications in coding theory and cryptography.
During the summer of 2018, he became interested in finite fields, a focus that has since led him to publish four papers. His most recent work, Counting Polynomials with Distinct Roots Using Sum, was presented at the International Workshop on the Arithmetic of Finite Fields in 2024.
“I was surprised to get the Vanier Award,” says Kuttner. “Receiving this award means that others consider my research interesting, which motivates me to work harder.”
Kuttner says the most rewarding part of his time at Carleton has been working closely with faculty members and collaborating on meaningful research. Looking ahead, he hopes to eventually become a professor in mathematics.
Graduate Student Funding Changes
This is the final year in which the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship will be awarded by the Government of Canada’s three research funding agencies. Moving forward, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) have revised their award programs and created a new harmonized talent program called the Canada Research Training Awards Suite.