Dr. Janet Rossant is a world-leading developmental biologist who has made major contributions to our understanding of how an embryo develops, how genes control development and how embryonic and other stem cells arise. Her research interests centre on understanding the genetic control of normal and abnormal development in the early mouse embryo, work that has shed light on how congenital anomalies in the heart, blood vessels and placenta arise. Her work on the genes that control blood vessel development has been of major importance in defining novel pathways for new drug interventions in cancer. She is also involved in stem cell research at the fundamental level and has shown that early embryos can give rise to trophoblast stem cells as well as pluripotent embryonic stem cells. These trophoblast stem cells provide a new model for understanding placental development and placental-related pregnancy disorders. Through her career, Dr. Rossant has been a pioneer and innovator of new techniques to manipulate the mouse genome, enabling the mouse to become the pre-eminent model for understanding the function of the human genome sequence.

Dr. Rossant is the Deputy Director of the Canadian Stem Cell Network and the Director of the Centre for Modelling Human Disease in Toronto, which is developing new mouse models of human disease. She is actively involved in the international developmental biology community, serving as Editor of Development for many years and as President of the Society for Developmental Biology in 1996-97. Dr. Rossant also served as Chair of CIHR's Working Group on stem cell research.

Dr. Rossant trained at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford in the United Kingdom and came to Canada in 1977. She is a Fellow of both the Royal Societies of London and Canada and a Distinguished Investigator of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. She is also a two-time Howard Hughes Medical Institute International Scholar.