Colin Soskolne

Colin L. Soskolne ─ born and raised in South Africa ─ obtained his PhD in epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania, USA, in 1982. Then, after 3.5 years as Director of the Epidemiology Research Unit of the Ontario Cancer Treatment and Research Foundation at the University of Toronto, Canada, he relocated in 1985 to be based at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. There he built the Epidemiology Program in the Department Health Services Administration and Community Medicine. He retired as Professor emeritus in 2013 and currently holds an Adjunct Professorship in the Faculty of Health, University of Canberra, Australia.

Dr. Soskolne has worked in research and training for four decades in various aspects of occupational and environmental epidemiology, focusing on global ecological integrity since 1995. In addition to his applied science methodological expertise, he has been a global force for initiating and integrating ethics into professional discourse. His strengths include impartiality, service in the public interest, broad knowledge and experience of the scientific method applied for inferring causation, the ability to critique methods in health studies from both the reductionist and post-normal science perspectives, as well as in evaluating and interpreting research reports. He is a Fellow in both the American College of Epidemiology and the Collegium Ramazzini.​

As President of the Canadian Society for Epidemiology and Biostatistics (2007-2011), he represented it on the then newly established Joint Policy Committee of the Societies of Epidemiology. He assumed the Chair in 2014 and has grown the organization to include 19 societies and associations globally; hence the renaming from JPC-SE to IJPC-SE. He remains engaged as a volunteer in several professional societies. His website is accessible at: www.colinsoskolne.com.

• Symposia Chair – Working at the Nexus of Research and Policy: The International Joint Policy Committee of the Societies of Epidemiology