Dr. Lyle Palmer is one of the Lunenfeld’s newest Senior Investigators, and a Professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto.

 

Dr. Palmer, renowned for his expertise in population health, completed his PhD studies in genetics and biostatistics at the University of Western Australia. His most recent position before joining the Lunenfeld was as Winthrop Professor of Genetic Epidemiology and Founding Director of the Centre for Genetic Epidemiology & Biostatistics at the University of Western Australia, where he was also a Professor in the Schools of Medicine & Pharmacology and Population Health. Until he returned to Australia in 2003, Dr. Palmer was an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Director of Statistical Genomics at the Channing Laboratory, Boston.

 

Dr. Palmer’s background includes training in clinical epidemiology, human genetics and biostatistics. He has a particular interest in the areas of life‐course genetic epidemiology and the developmental origins of health and disease (DoHAD). He is working closely with other Lunenfeld and Mount Sinai Hospital researchers and clinicians including Drs. Stephen Lye and Alan Bocking in these areas and is embedded within the Prosserman Centre for Health Research at 60 Murray Street.

 

Together with many partner organizations across Ontario, Dr. Palmer is leading a large‐scale expansion of the Provincial capacity in the area of genetic epidemiology. He is Executive Scientific Director of the Ontario Health Study (ontariohealthstudy.ca)—the largest population‐based cohort study ever attempted in North America. He is also a key member of the Mount Sinai Hospital team currently planning the Ontario Birth Study, which is designed to be one of the largest and best characterized gestation and birth studies in the world.

 

The Ontario Health Study aims to recruit all participating adults in Ontario—up to 9.5 million people—and is designed to capture information using online tools over a participant’s entire lifespan. The study will pay special attention to the complex interplay of factors that underlie the development of many of the most common and/or chronic diseases, including those that impact family and community health. Findings from the study will be used to help prevent common diseases, and to assist doctors and researchers in finding new targets for diagnosis and treatment.

 

Dr. Palmer has been recognized for his leadership role in biomedical research by numerous awards, including Fulbright and Churchill Fellowships. Over the last five years, he has chaired and/or given invited symposia at over 30 international scientific meetings, delivered over 150 invited lectures, produced over 100 publications, and has co‐edited a commercially successful encyclopaedia of genetic epidemiology that has become standard reference material. Dr. Palmer is also a highly acclaimed speaker and teacher at the international level.