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 Dr. Kermit Ritland
Professor
Department of Forest Sciences
University of British Columbia
2424 Main Mall
Vancouver. BC
V6T 1Z4
Genome BC Project Leader
Dr. Kermit Ritland is a Professor in the Department of Forest Sciences at the University of British Columbia. He received his BSc in Botany from the University of Washington (Seattle) in 1977. In 1982, he obtained his PhD in Genetics at the University of California, Davis. He then did postdoctoral work at UBC Botany and the University of California, Riverside, before joining the faculty in Botany at the University of Toronto in 1985. In 1996, he returned to UBC to assume the position of NSERC University/Industry Senior Research Chair in Population Genetics.
Dr. Ritland's research concerns the applications of population genetics to studies of mating systems, quantitative inheritance, population structure, and genomics. In his position of NSERC Research Chair, his most interesting accomplishment was the finding of the white coat-colour gene underlying the Kermode bear (a white-coloured black bear, the symbol of the "Great Bear Rainforest"). In his role as co-PI of the Genome BC Forestry Genomics project, he has supervised the development of genetic markers and genetic maps in spruce and poplar, and the comparative analysis of DNA sequences of these species and other species, to document evolutionary rates and patterns of natural selection.
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