Gideon Koren

Gideon Koren M.D., FACMT, FRCP(C) (Hebrew: גדעון קורן‎; born 1947 in Tel Aviv) is a Canadian pediatrician, clinical pharmacologist, and toxicologist. Koren is also a composer of Israeli popular music.

Biography

Early life and academic background

Born in 1947 in Tel Aviv in the British Mandate of Palestine, just prior to the establishment of the State of Israel, Gideon Koren was raised in the neighbouring little town of Kiryat Ono. His father was the chief engineer of Reading Power station of the Electricity Company in Tel Aviv. In his childhood he played French horn in the orchestra of the premilitary youth Gadna.

Koren received his Doctor of Medicine from the Sackler School of Medicine at Tel Aviv University in 1973. After a period of military service, he pursued postgraduate clinical studies in pediatrics and pediatric nephrology, and research training in pediatric toxicology and pharmacology and membrane biology at the Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Toronto. He joined the staff of the university and hospital and rose rapidly through the ranks to full professorship in pediatrics, pharmacology and medicine, won a Career Scientist Award from the Ontario Ministry of Health and established an international reputation as an expert in the field of clinical pharmacology and toxicology. He had a role in a controversial hospital dispute. He was later awarded the endowed Ivey Chair in Molecular Toxicology at the Schulich School of Medicine at The University of Western Ontario. At UWO, he heads the establishment of a national program in human toxicology in parallel to his continuing work at the University of Toronto and the Hospital for Sick Children.