Professor Knoppers (PhD) (Distinguished James McGill Professor Emerita), is uniquely suited to Chair the Board of Governance of the PCGL. She has made significant contributions to international policymaking. Since her presidency of the International Ethics Committee of HUGO (1996 – 2004) and her work with the ASHG Social Issues Committee in the 1990s as well as in the drafting of UNESCO’s Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights (1993-1997), she co-led the ethics work of the HapMap. From 2000 – 2006, she served as Co-Chair of the Sampling/ELSI Committee of the 1000 Genomes Project and as a member of the Scientific Steering Committee (Ethics) of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) (2009-2017).

She founded the international P3G (Public Population Project in Genomics & Society) and CARTaGENE, Quebec’s population biobank in 2007. In 2013, she became co-Chair of the Regulatory and Ethics Working Group of  Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) and since 2023, a member of its Board. She also served as a Director on the Canadian Council of Academics, as a member of the Bioethics Advisory Committee of Canadian Blood Services and gave the prestigious 2017 Galton Lecture in the UK. Additionally, she is an Officer of the Order of Canada and of Quebec and holds five honorary doctorates while also a Fellow of the RSC, of the CAHS and of the AAAS.

In 2019, she was awarded the Henry G. Friesen International Prize in Health Research while a member of  the International Commission on the Clinical Use of Human Germline Genome Editing. This was followed by receipt of  the  2020 Till and McColloch prize for international policy (stem cell research) and the 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award of the Canadian Bioethics Society.