Sam Sheps is a professor and program director of the M.Sc./Ph.D. program in the Department of Health Care and Epidemiology at the University of British Columbia. As Director of the Western Regional Training Centre for Health Services Research, he is actively involved in the field, and also in clinical epidemiology and, as chair of a working committee of the Canadian Patient Safety Institute, also in patient safety. Sheps has served on the board of the Vancouver Peretz Institute, a Jewish organization established to foster Yiddish culture in Vancouver.