Dr. Scherer holds the GlaxoSmithKline-CIHR Endowed Chair in Genetics and Genomics at The Hospital for Sick Children and University of Toronto. He has made numerous contributions to medical genetics including mapping sequencing and disease gene studies of human chromosome 7. He collaborated with the J. Craig Venter Institute to generate the first genome sequence of an individual ushering in an era of genomic medicine. In 2004, his team co-discovered global gene copy number variation (CNV) and has since shown that CNV is the most abundant type of variation of human DNA. His group has also discovered CNV to contribute to the etiology of autism and the Database of Genomic Variants he founded facilitates hundreds of thousands of diagnoses each year. He sits on the Scientific Advisory Board of Combimatrix Diagnostics and Autism Speaks, and he is on the Board of Trustees of Genome Canada and the Human Genome Organization (HUGO). Dr. Scherer has won numerous honors including the 2004 Steacie Prize, an International Howard Hughes Medical Institute Scholarship, and the 2008 Premier Summit Award for Medical Research.
