Dr. Allard is a Professor of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and Vice-Dean, Health Engagement of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and a Cardiovascular Pathologist in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory and a Principal Investigator in the Centre for Heart Lung Innovation at St. Paul's Hospital.

He was born and raised in Vancouver and attended the University of British Columbia (UBC) where he obtained a BSc in Biology in 1978 and an MD in 1981. Following a Rotating Internship at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, he returned to UBC for post-graduate clinical training in anatomic pathology that included training in renal pathology at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London, England and a pulmonary research fellowship with Dr. James Hogg in the UBC Pulmonary Research Laboratory from 1985 to 1987. Subsequently, Dr. Allard undertook cardiovascular research training at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in the United States with Drs. Sanford Bishop and Peter Anderson, returning to UBC and St.Paul's Hospital in 1990.

His research program focuses primarily on adaptation of the heart to physiological states, such as endurance exercise, and pathological processes, such as hypertension, that result in cardiac hypertrophy. He is particularly interested in how substrate use by the heart is altered under these conditions and how changes in substrate use influence heart function. A major recent focus of his research has been delineation of the cellular and molecular mechanisms that account for the alterations in substrate use by the hypertrophied heart.