Dr. James Robar

Dr. James Robar is a globally recognized medical physicist. He is the Chief of Medical Physics at Nova Scotia Health, Professor of Radiation Oncology at Dalhousie University and founding Program Director of the Masters and Doctoral Programs in Medical Physics.

In 2021, Dr. Robar received the 2021 Governor General's Innovation Award, one of only six recipients in Canada. Dr. Robar is co-founder and Chief Science Officer at Adaptiiv, a rapidly growing Halifax-based company focused on improving the accuracy of cancer treatment. Following Nova Scotia Health becoming one of the first sites in the world to conduct clinical trials using Varian’s HyperSight imaging technology in combination with the Ethos radiation therapy system, Dr. Robar was named as Chair of Varian’s global Intelligent Imaging Consortium.

As a scientist, serial inventor and entrepreneur, Dr. Robar has pioneered multiple advancements improving imaging and treatment delivery for radiotherapy. These technologies include enhanced imaging to improve the accuracy of targeting tumours with radiation, hardware and software detecting sub-millimetre motion of patients to improve the precision of treatment, planning algorithms to provide improved sparing of healthy tissues and organs, and turnkey solutions allowing intelligent design of 3D printed, patient-specific accessories used during radiotherapy.