Dr. Dorian received his medical degree from McGill University in Montreal in 1976. He completed training in Internal Medicine, Clinical Pharmacology, and Cardiology at the University of Toronto and completed a Fellowship in Cardiac Electrophysiology at Stanford University. He is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology and in the Division of Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Toronto, and a Staff Scientist at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, and is Staff Cardiac Electrophysiologist at St. Michael's Hospital.

Dr. Paul Dorian was the Department Director, Division of Cardiology, University of Toronto (2009-2019), and President of the Canadian Heart Rhythm Society (2013-2014).

He is a recipient of the University of Toronto Department of Medicine Research Award, and the Canadian Cardiovascular Society and Canadian Heart Rhythm Society Achievement Awards.

He has served and continues to serve on the steering committees of multiple multicenter clinical trials in arrhythmia care.

He was the principal investigator of the ALIVE RCT of antiarrhythmic drugs in cardiac arrest, the Family study on predicting and preventing sudden cardiac death, the CIHR funded EpiDOSE Trial, and the Program to reduce sudden death funded by the Canadian Arrhythmia Network.

He has led a basic science research program on the mechanisms of ventricular fibrillation, treatment of experimental cardiac arrest, and the circulatory and electrophysiology of cardio pulmonary resuscitation.

He has also been active in a research program on the establishment of optimum systems of care for patients with atrial fibrillation, including assessment of quality of life in patient reported outcomes. He designed and led the implementation of scales to measure quality of life in AF, including the Canadian Cardiovascular Society Severity in Atrial Fibrillation (CCS-SAF) score, The AFSS scale, and the AFEQT scale, which are the most used methods for the measurement of quality of life in patients with AF.

He is one of the core participants of the University of Toronto Sports Cardiology Program which brings together academic researchers, academic and community cardiologists, physiology researchers, students, and patients in the establishment of a clinical and research program in sports cardiology. He has led studies on the incidence and causes of sudden death in competitive sport, and the diagnostic accuracy of the ECG in athlete screening.

He has served on the CCS guidelines/position paper writing panel committee for atrial fibrillation, heart failure, ventricular arrhythmia, and athlete preparticipation screening.

He has published over 500 peer reviewed papers and is Associate Editor of the textbook Electrophysiological Disorders of the Heart.