About Us > Governance > Thomas Hudson

Thomas Hudson, MD

President and Scientific Director, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Toronto, Ontario

As president and scientific director of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR), Dr. Hudson is implementing the Institute’s strategic plan, working with cancer research institutions across Ontario to leverage existing strengths.

Focusing on prevention, early diagnosis, cancer targets and new therapeutics, the plan’s innovation platforms include imaging and interventions, bio-repositories and pathology, genomics and high-throughput screening, and informatics and bio-computing. Dr Hudson is recruiting more than 50 internationally recognized principal investigators to conduct the research identified in the strategic plan.

Internationally renowned for his work in genomics, Dr. Hudson was the founder and director of the McGill University and Genome Quebec Innovation Centre in Montreal, Quebec, and assistant-director of the Whitehead/MIT Center for Genome Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.

At the Whitehead Institute, Dr. Hudson led the effort to generate dense physical and gene maps of the human and mouse genomes. He is a leader in the development and applications of robotic systems and DNA chip-based methodologies for genome research. In June 1996, he founded the Montreal Genome Centre based at the McGill University Health Centre Research Institute. In 2003, this group expanded to become the McGill University and Genome Quebec Innovation Centre. Dr. Hudson and his team were founding members of the International Haplotype Map Consortium. His interests in human genetic diseases focus on the dissection of complex genetic diseases. Disease projects in Dr. Hudson’s laboratory included the search for genes predisposing to lupus, inflammatory bowel disease, coronary artery disease, asthma, diabetes and colon cancer. The laboratory also used the DNA-chip technology to characterize breast and ovarian cancer.

In 2007, Dr. Hudson was appointed to the rank of professor (status-only) in the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto. He taught in the departments of Human Genetics and Medicine at McGill University and practiced medicine at the McGill University Health Centre – Montreal General Hospital (Division of Immunology and Allergy).

Dr. Hudson is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He was one of the co-founding members of P3G and is currently serving as its scientific director. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Human Genetics.

Dr. Hudson has received numerous awards, including the 2005 Achievement of the Year in Healthcare from Maclean’s magazine, the 2005 Award for Research in Immunology by the Canadian Society for Allergy and Clinical Immunology, the André-Dupont 2002 Young Investigator Award given by Quebec’s Clinical Research Club, an Investigator Award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, a Burroughs-Wellcome Clinician-Scientist Award, the 2002 Prix de la Santé from the Armand-Frappier Foundation, the 2001 Young Scientist Award by the Genetics Society of Canada, the 2000 Scientist of the Year by Radio-Canada, and the 1999 Canada’s Top 40 Under 40.