Dr. Joanne Kotsopoulos

Dr. Joanne Kotsopoulos is a scientist with the Familial Breast Cancer Research Unit at the Women’s College Research Institute, Women’s College Hospital, and an associate professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto (U of T). She received her PhD from the U of T in 2007 and subsequently conducted her post-doctoral research training at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Dr. Kotsopoulos directs a wide range of research initiatives to further our understanding of BRCA-associated breast and ovarian cancer with the goal of identifying viable, evidence-based strategies that confer substantial risk reduction and improve outcomes. Her studies have demonstrated an important role of hormonal, reproductive, and modifiable exposures on BRCA-associated cancer development. This critical work has provided women and healthcare providers with evidence-based management options while contributing to our understanding of the pathogenesis of hereditary cancer. She also leads several projects aimed at improving our understanding of factors that impact ovarian cancer prognosis, a highly fatal disease.