C. Scott Findlay is Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Ottawa, Director of the University's Institute of Environment, and Research Associate at the Centre for Cancer Therapeutics at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. In April 2005, he was appointed to the Science Advisory Board of the International Joint Commission, and in May 2008 to the Challenge Advisory Panel under the federal Chemical Management Plan. His main research interests concern the quantification of risks posed to ecosystem structure and function by human activities, the notion of scientific weight of evidence in administrative decision-making generally and science-informed policy in particular, integration of traditional and western scientific knowledge, and the role of Darwinian evolution in tumourigenesis and the therapeutic response of cancer.