Sherry Taylor

Dr. Taylor is a clinical molecular geneticist with more than 30 years experience in the delivery of molecular genetic diagnostic testing for inherited disease and cancer.  She received her PhD from Queen’s University (Kingston, Ontario) in 1990 in which she identified mutations in the Factor VIII and Factor IX genes causing Hemophilia A and B.  After which she undertook a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. James Gusella in the Neurogenetics Unit at Harvard Medical School in Boston and was a member of the team which cloned the gene for Huntington disease.  On her return to Canada, she completed her Canadian College of Medical Geneticists (CCMG) fellowship in Molecular Genetics.  She is currently a Fellow of the CCMG and a European registered Clinical Laboratory Geneticist. 

Since the early 1990’s she has held leadership positions in clinical molecular genetics laboratories and genetic and genomic diagnostic laboratory services in the Canadian provinces of Ontario, New Brunswick and Alberta. She is most recently an Associate Professor in the Department of Medical Genetics and cross appointed to Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at the University of Alberta.

In addition to her experience in molecular genetic service Dr. Taylor has served on multiple government committees related to genetic and genomic services and education throughout her career.  As part of that work, she had primary responsibility for implementing familial cancer testing across all genetic diagnostic laboratories in Ontario in the early 2000’s.  She has also had a leading role in undergraduate medical education, developing, implementing and overseeing curriculum at Queen’s University, Dalhousie University and the University of Alberta and a continuing interest in genetics education for health care providers.   Her research activities have been focused on cancer, including inherited cancers and studies of epigenetic changes as early field effects and risk factors in colorectal cancer as well as implementation of exome and genome sequencing and knowledge sharing in genetic variant analysis.