Innovation Profile: Dr Steve Scherer
Director, The Centre for Applied Genomics
The Hospital for Sick Children
Known for co-discovering the phenomenon of global copy number variation of DNA and genes as the most common type of genetic variation in the human genome, Dr Scherer leads The Centre for Applied Genomics, one of Canada's busiest laboratories.
Dr Steve Scherer is a Senior Scientist in Genetics & Genome Biology and Director of The Centre for Applied Genomics at The Hospital for Sick Children. He is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto.
Known for co-discovering the phenomenon of global copy number variation (CNV) of DNA and genes as the most common type of genetic variation in the human genome, Dr Scherer leads one of Canada's busiest laboratories. His group has discovered numerous disease susceptibility genes and most recently has defined CNV and other genetic factors underlying autism spectrum disorder. He collaborated with Craig Venter's team to decode human chromosome 7 and to generate the first genome sequence of an individual. Over 250 peer-reviewed papers document his research and his work has been cited more than 14,000 times.
Dr Scherer has received numerous honours including the 2004 Steacie Prize in the Natural Sciences, an International Howard Hughes Medical Institute Scholarship and a Premier's Summit Award for Medical Research in 2008. In 2001, Dr Scherer accepted an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Windsor and in 2007 he was awarded the University of Waterloo's first Science Distinguished Alumni Award. He sits on the Scientific Advisory Board of Combimatrix Diagnostics and Autism Speaks and is on the Board of Trustees of Genome Canada and the Human Genome Organization (HUGO). Dr Scherer holds the GlaxoSmithKline-Canadian Institutes of Health Research Endowed Chair in Genetics and Genomics and is a Scholar of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR).
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