Guy Rouleau, OC, OQ, MD, PhD, FRCPC, FRSC, FAAN
Dr. Guy Rouleau is a Distinguished James McGill Professor at McGill University and Chair of the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery. He also serves as Director of the Division of Molecular Diagnostics within the Department of Clinical Laboratory Medicine at the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), where he practices as a neurologist-geneticist. In addition, he is co-founder of the Tanenbaum Open Science Institute.
He received his MD with the distinction Magna Cum Laude in 1980 from the University of Ottawa and conducted his clinical training in Neurology at McGill University from 1980‐1985. He went on to pursue a PhD (1989) in Genetics at Harvard University. He returned to Montreal in 1989 to establish his research and clinical career at McGill University, where he remained for 15 years. In 2004 he moved to the University of Montreal where he created the Centre for Excellence in Neuromics and became Director of the Research Centre of the CHU Sainte-Justine. In 2013, he returned to McGill as Director of The Neuro, a role he held for over 13 years.
As a clinician scientist, Dr. Rouleau sees patients with neurological disorders that have an important genetic basis. He focuses his research on discovering the underlying causes of these diseases to facilitate the development of accurate diagnostic tests and treatments. Throughout his active research career, which spans more than 40 years, he has published over 1,000 articles in peer‐reviewed journals, which have been cited more than 129,000 times (Google Scholar). Among Dr. Rouleau’s landmark achievements are his contribution to the identification of dozens of disease‐causing genes and his discovery of new mutational mechanisms. His discovery of the genes causing neurological and psychiatric diseases, including autism, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, hereditary neuropathies, epilepsy and schizophrenia has led to a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms that lead to these diseases.
He has supervised more than a hundred students at the Masters, PhD and Post-doctoral levels in addition to receiving numerous awards, including the Michael Smith Award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Margolese National Brain Disorders Prize from the University of British Columbia, the Prix du Québec – Wilder Penfield from the Government of Québec, the Prix d’excellence of the Collège des médecins du Québec, and the Canada Gairdner Wightman Award from the Gairdner Foundation. He is an Officer of the National Order of Québec, an officer of the Order of Canada, a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology. He serves on the boards of several foundations, nonprofit organizations, and companies. He served on Canada’s Science, Technology and Innovation Council and has sat on various grant panel committees (e.g. CIHR, NIH, ALSA, NNFF, FRQ-S).
As co-founder of the Tanenbaum Open Science Institute, Dr. Rouleau is pioneering a new way of doing research by transforming The Neuro into the first academic institution to adopt Open Science principles in order to accelerate discovery and benefit patients and society.
