Research Seminar with Simon Rousseau, Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine at McGill University, organized by the AI in Health and Nutrition lab, ARTORG and the Lung Precision Medicine Program, Department for BioMedical Research.
Simon Rousseau is an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at McGill University, and a member of the Meakins-Christie laboratories at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre, part of the translational program in respiratory medicine. The major focus of his research program is systems biology of host-pathogen interactions in lung diseases.
Trained as a biologist, he obtained his Ph.D. in cellular and molecular biology in 2000 from Université Laval in Québec City where he studied the Vascular Endothelial Growth factor (VEGF) signalling pathways leading to endothelial cell migration, under the supervision of Professor Jacques Huot. He then joined the group of Professor Sir Philip Cohen at the MRC Protein Phosphorylation Unit in Dundee, Scotland, a world re-known scientific unit in the field of signal transduction to investigate the signalling pathways involved in pro-inflammatory cytokine production by macrophages. In January 2008, he was recruited as an assistant professor at McGill University and joined the Meakins-Christie Laboratories. To date, he has contributed to the formation of more than 60 trainees of all levels.
He is a long-standing member of the Québec respiratory health research network, leading the Cystic Fibrosis strategic research group from 2012 to 2014, before becoming the multi-institution biobank codirector in 2015 and its director in 2018. At the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, he was named as the co-director of the Biobanque québécoise de la COVID-19 (BQC19), a $22M provincial initiative established by FRQ-S and Génome Québec to help the research community investigate and mitigate the outcome of SARS-CoV-2 infections. He became the Director of the Canadian Respiratory Research Network in January 2023, the largest network of researchers and clinician-scientists working in the field of respiratory health in Canada. He launched in 2023, shAIRe, a CRRN-led initiative (funded in 2024 through the Lung Health Initiative of CIHR) to promote the sharing of data on respiratory health across Canada. These infrastructures are committed to open science and knowledge transfer.
