Scientific Director of the Institute of Circulatory and Respiratory Health
Dr. Jean L. Rouleau
Named Dean of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Montreal in June 2003, Dr. Rouleau received his MD (cum laude) from the University of Ottawa in 1974 and his FRCPC in Internal Medicine and Cardiology following his training at McGill University. He won the McLaughlin Research Fellowship to the Cardiovascular Research Institute at the University of California at San Francisco, and then returned to Canada where he held a number of key positions in medicine, cardiology, physiology, and pharmacology at McGill University, the University of Toronto, and the University of Montreal.
Dr. Rouleau is an accomplished clinical cardiologist, having served as Director of the Coronary Care Unit at the Montreal General Hospital, the Hospital du Sacré Coeur in Montreal and, most recently, at the University Health Network in Toronto. He has also been Director of the Medical Intensive Care Unit of the Montreal Heart Institute and has served as Director of Cardiology at the University of Sherbrooke, as Associate Director of Research of the Medical ICU at the Montreal Heart Institute, and Director of Cardiology and the Cardiovascular Program at the University Health Network and Mount-Sinaï Hospital of the University of Toronto.
Dr. Rouleau is also regarded as an excellent teacher, having influenced a generation of students in both cardiology and medicine. In 1996-97 he won the Best Teacher of the Department of Medicine award at the Montreal Heart Institute. He has also been a mentor to over twenty graduate and postgraduate research students who have chosen to study with him.
He received the Exceptional Merit Award of the FRSQ, and has been Governor for Quebec at the American College of Cardiology. He received the Confederation Commemorative Medal of Canada in 1992, the Prestige Award from the Quebec Medical Association in 2009, and is the recipient of the CSCI/Royal College Henry Friesen Award for 2009.
However, it is for his research accomplishments that Dr. Rouleau has been best recognized in Canada and throughout the academic world. His research interests include: heart failure, post-infarction, ventricular remodeling, neurohormones, therapeutic interventions, ventricular function, and the development of heart failure post-infarction. His work has explored myocardial pathophysiology, pharmacology, and molecular biology in animal models and human subjects, and has contributed greatly to our fundamental understanding of myocardial and endothelial function in human disease. He also chaired the MRC Cardiovascular B Committee.
He has made major contributions in clinical research, examining multiple aspects of investigation and intervention in human heart disease. His studies have resulted in 335 peer-reviewed publications in high impact journals, seven book chapters and 292 published abstracts. For these research accomplishments, Dr. Rouleau was awarded the Career Research Achievement Award of the Canadian Cardiovascular Society in 1997, and the Annual Achievement Award from the Canadian Cardiovascular Society in 2005.
He has served on several editorial committees, including Circulation (Journal of the American Heart Association), the Canadian Medical Association Journal, and the Canadian Journal of Cardiology. He has also been a Member of the Governing Council, Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR) since 2005, and a member of the LCME/CACMS (American and Canadian Medical School Accreditation Committees). He is presently co-chairing the Academic Health Science Centers – National Task Force on Securing the Future of Canada's Academic Health Sciences Centre. He is also a member of the CIHR President's Advisory Board on Patient-Oriented Research.