Biography
Dr. Walker is a Maternal-Fetal Medicine Specialist at The Ottawa Hospital, Senior Scientist at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, and Professor in the Faculty of Medicine and School of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Ottawa. He is an internationally recognized Clinical Epidemiologist with over 360 peer reviewed publications, an h-index of 81 and has held $19 million in grants as a principal investigator. He is also co-founder and Scientific Director of the Better Outcomes Registry and Network (BORN) Ontario. Dr Walker’s research interests are broad in perinatal epidemiology including clinical trials, cohort studies, health services research and more recently artificial intelligence.
Dr. Walker is a health care executive and holds a Master’s in Health Care Management from Harvard University. Having completed a tenure as Chair and Chief of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Ottawa, he is now the Vice Dean of Internationalization and Global Health for the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa. Dr. Walker’s other leadership roles include chairing the National Society of Investigators for Obstetrics and Gynecology in Canada. He was the chair of the Canadian Perinatal Surveillance System for Health Canada and the chair of the Ontario Maternal Newborn Advisory Committee for 10 years. In these roles Dr Walker set health policy and practice improvement at both the provincial and national levels. Most recently, he was asked by the provincial government to co-chair the task force on COVID-19 and pregnancy.