Dr. Rudnicki is senior scientist and head of the Program in Molecular Genetics at the Ottawa Health Research Institute and professor of Medicine at the University of Ottawa in Canada. He received a Ph.D. in molecular biology in 1988 from the University of Ottawa. He did postdoctoral research at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in the United States. In 1993, he received the National Cancer Institute of Canada Research Scientist Award and the Medical Research Council of Canada Research Scholarship Award. In 1999, he received the Medical Research Council of Canada Research Scientist Award and the Premier's Research Excellence Award from the Province of Ottawa. In 2001, he was awarded the Canada Research Chair in Molecular Genetics, and, in 2006, he was elected as a fellow to the Royal Society of Canada.

Michael Rudnicki's laboratory uses molecular genetic approaches to determine the function and roles of genes that regulate cellular proliferation and differentiation of stem cells. He and his colleagues identified Pax7 as a transcription factor required for the specification of satellite cells and identified Wnt signaling as playing an important role in the myogenic specification of adult stem cells.