Dr. George R. Douglas
Dr. Douglas obtained his BSc (Honours) Degree in Biology (1967) and his PhD (1971) in Genetics from the University of Western Ontario, London Ontario, Canada. He was awarded a Medical Research Council of Canada Post-doctoral Fellowship in 1971 which he held at the Department of Paediatrics, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada where he studied human gene mapping, and subsequently at the Department of Medical Genetics, City of Hope National Medical Center, Duarte, California where he studied molecular genetics. In 1974 he accepted a position as a Research Scientist at Health Canada, Ottawa, and was appointed Head, Mutagenesis Section (now Mechanistic Studies Division), Health Canada in 1978. He held an Adjunct Professor appointment at INRS Institut Armand Frappier, Montreal, Quebec from 1998 to 2006. He retired from Health Canada in January 2008, and currently holds a voluntary appointment as Scientist Emeritus with Health Canada.
His research over the last 49 years, has centred on moving new technologies into regulatory practice, and has covered a range of topics in genetic toxicology including: the genetic effects of complex chemical mixtures and their components; the application of genotoxicity tests in regulatory use; human population studies; and heritable genetic risk assessment. More recently his research has focussed on the development and application of transgenic mutation models in genetic toxicology, toxicogenomic tools for human risk assessment, the study of genomic instability, and the quantitative aspects of dose response relationships for genetox endpoints. His recent efforts have been directed toward establishing an OECD Test Guideline for the Transgenic Rodent Gene Mutation Assay (adopted 2011), and currently on its use for detecting heritable genetic effects. He has accumulated over 300 scientific papers, book chapters, conference proceedings and abstracts.
Dr. Douglas is the recipient of the 2001 Health Canada Excellence in Science award, the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal (2003), the Alexander Hollaender Award from the Environmental Mutagen and Genomics Society (2004), and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal (2008). He has served on many Health Canada departmental committees, including the Health Canada Chief Scientist Search Committee, and the Departmental Research Scientist Career Progression Committee. He was elected as Treasurer of the Genetic Society of Canada (1983-89), Treasurer of the International Association of Environmental Mutagen Societies (2001-07), and to the Council (1991-94; 2003-06) and Executive Board (2003-05) of the Environmental Mutagen and Genomics Society. He has served on numerous national and international boards and committees of organizations such as the University of Ottawa, Natural Science and Engineering Research Council, WHO, OECD, US EPA, US FDA, NIEHS, International Workshops on Genotoxicity Tests (IWGT), and the Health and Environmental Sciences Institute (HESI). He has also served on the editorial boards of a number of scientific journals; Environmental and Molecular Mutagenesis, Mutagenesis, and Mutation Research Reviews.