Scientific Director, CIHR Institute of Genetics
University Professor, Anne and Max Tanenbaum Chair in Molecular Medicine, Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular and Medical Genetics, University of Toronto

Dr. McInnes is an internationally recognized human and developmental geneticist in the fields of eye development and inherited eye disease.  He received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Dalhousie University, and his PhD from McGill University in Montreal, where he trained with Charles Scriver.  Dr. McInnes . Hewas previously the Head of the Program in Developmental Biology at the Research Institute of the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, and an International Research Scholar of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. 

Dr. McInnes has made many contributions to the understanding of the molecular basis of retinal and eye development, and to the identification of genes and processes associated with inherited retinal degenerations.  These discoveries include the identification of the eye developmental genes CHX10, CRX, and VSX1, as well as the photoreceptor genes ROM1 and PHR1. Dr. McInnes' group demonstrated the relationship between several of the genes discovered in his lab with various forms of inherited blindness.  With Derek van der Kooy, Dr. McInnes was the co-discoverer of retinal stem cells in the adult eye.  His group also identified a novel principle that underlies most if not all forms of retinal degeneration, a principle that appears to challenge current ideas about why photoreceptor cells die in retinal degenerative diseases. 

Dr. McInnes is one of three co-authors of the 5^th, 6^th and 7^th editions of Thompson and Thompson's Genetics in Medicine.  Amongst other honours, Dr. McInnes received the Samuel Rosenthal Award (2002), the Dales Award from the University of Toronto (2004), and an honorary Doctor of Laws from Dalhousie University (2007). He is a Senior Fellow of Massey College, University of Toronto, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. In 2009, Dr. McInnes was appointed to the Order of Canada, Canada's highest civilian order.