Professor Daar, [FRS (C), D.Phil (Oxon), FRCP (Lon), FRCS (Eng), FRCSPC] was born in Tanzania. He is Professor of Public Health Sciences and of Surgery at the University of Toronto, Senior Scientist at the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health, University Health Network and University of Toronto; and Chief Science and Ethics Officer of Grand Challenges Canada.
He is Chair of the Board of the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases and Chair of the Advisory Board of the United Nations University International Institute of Global Health.
His academic career has spanned biomedical sciences, organ transplantation, surgery, global health, bioethics and global health.
He works in various advisory or consulting capacities with the UN, the World Health Organization and UNESCO, and was a member of the African Union High Level Panel on Modern Biotechnology
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS), the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, and the New York Academy of Sciences. He is a member of UNESCO’s International Bioethics Committee and, until this year, of the Ethics Committee of the Human Genome Organization.
His international awards include the Hunterian Professorship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and the UNESCO Avicenna Prize for Ethics of Science, and he holds the official world record for performing the youngest kidney transplant. He was awarded the Anthony Miller Prize for Research Excellence at the University of Toronto in 2005.
Professor Daar’s major research focus is on the use of genomics and other life sciences to ameliorate global health inequities, with a particular focus on building scientific capacity and increasing innovation in developing countries, in addition to studying how technologies can be rapidly taken from “lab to village”