Professor of Medicine and Physiology
Director of the Cardiology Division
University of Alberta

Dr. Archer is a graduate of Queen's University (Gold Medal 1981). After interning at the Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster, BC he completed training in Medicine and Cardiology at the University of Minnesota where he became Professor of Medicine. In 1998 he returned to Canada.. He is the founder of the Vascular Biology Research Group and is the Heart and Stroke Chair for Cardiovascular Research for Northern Alberta. In 2004 he received a Canada Research Chair in Oxygen Sensing and Translational Cardiovascular Research. As a clinician his interests include echocardiography and attending on ward and consult services. He has developed innovative, multidisciplinary, rapid-response health care delivery programs, including Cardiac EASE and EASE Telehealth.  His research focuses on blood vessels and how they sense oxygen at a molecular level. He has helped define the molecular basis for hypoxic pulmonary vasoconstriction and has discovered therapies for pulmonary hypertension and persistent ductus arteriosus. An author of four books, Dr. Archer has also published over 130 peer-reviewed papers. He is on the editorial board of Circulation Research and several other journals. His awards include the 2004 Research Achievement Award from the Canadian Cardiovascular Society.  Dr. Archer takes special pride in the 20 young investigators he has mentored over the past decade. Trainees from the Vascular Biology Research Group have won the Cournand Comroe Young Investigator Award at the American Heart Association Annual Meeting for 4 of the past 5 years (to 2004). Dr. Archer is the principle investigator in a $20-million initiative to build ABACUS, the Alberta Cardiovascular and Stroke Research Centre at the University of Alberta.