Paula Gordon, OC, OBC, MD, FRCPC, FSBI

Clinical Professor, University of British Columbia

Professional Bio

Paula Gordon is Clinical Professor of Radiology at UBC and works in Vancouver. She introduced breast ultrasound to the city and was among the first to use it for image guided biopsies. Because of her training as a fellow in ultrasound, it was her practice to scan the entire breast, in addition to the target which prompted the referral. The audit of her outcomes led her to realize that many of the cancers she’d biopsied had been seen only on ultrasound, either as palpable masses, or incidental findings in women who’d presented for other indications.

Her publication in 1995 was the first to show that ultrasound could find nonpalpable cancers missed on mammograms. This has led to a paradigm change in the management of screening women with dense breasts that began in the USA in 2009, but is now spreading to Canada, the UK, Asia, Australia and Europe.

She’s received numerous awards, including, among many others, the Specialist of the Year Award by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, Queen Elizabeth Diamond and Platinum Jubilee Awards and the Order of British Columbia. In 2022, she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2025, she received the Gold Medal from the Society of Breast Imaging.

She volunteers as Medical Advisor to DenseBreastsCanada.ca and DenseBreast-Info.org, and as Vice President of the Board of the Canucks for Kids Fund.

Education

University of Toronto 1978

Awards

1994 Best Teacher of the Year Award

2000 Canadian Heads of Academic Radiology Development

2004 BC Women’s Hospital Award Excellence in Teaching

2011 UBC Killam Teaching Prize

2012 Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Medal

2013 Order of British Columbia

2014 CWEN Top 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada

2016 Honorary Alumnus Award, UBC Medical Alumni Assoc

2020 RCPSC Prix d-Excellence Specialist of the Year

2022 UBC Radiology Excellence in Research/Discovery/

2022 Officer, Order of Canada

2022 JBI Best Article in Original Research

2022 JBI Highest Citations Award

2023 Queen Elizabeth Platinum Jubilee Award

2025 Gold Medal, Society of Breast Imaging

Volunteer Work

Medical Advisor, Dense Breasts Canada 2016-present

Medical Advisory Board: www.densebreast-info.org 2014-present

Member and Vice president, Canucks for Kids Fund 2006-present