Laura Arbour

Dr. Laura Arbour is a Professor in the Department of Medical Genetics at the University of British Columbia, and Affiliate Professor in the Division of Medical Sciences at the University of Victoria. Trained as both pediatrician and clinical geneticist (McGill University) she has been addressing the genetic determinants of health with Indigenous populations for more than two decades. Through her UBC Community Genetics Research Program she has focused on rare, single gene disorders and complex conditions in partnership with First Nations of BC and Inuit of Nunavut.   Her research has been continuously funded through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and others since 2004.  She has received several awards for her work, with the most recent being the 2023 Life Sciences British Columbia-Genome BC Award for Scientific Excellence. Currently she is the project lead (with co-leads Drs. Wyeth Wasserman and Nadine Caron) for the Silent Genomes Project, a national project addressing inequity of genomic diagnosis for Indigenous patients of Canada