Associates

David Jenkins

Associate Senior Scientist

David Jenkins is a Professor, Departments of Medicine and Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto, a staff physician in the division of endocrinology and metabolism, Director of the Clinical Nutrition and Risk Factor Modification Center, and a scientist at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute at St. Michael’s Hospital., Unity Health Toronto.

Educated at Oxford University, he was the first researcher to demonstrate the breadth of metabolic effects of viscous soluble fiber on blood glucose and cholesterol lowering of relevance to prevention and treatment of diabetes and heart disease. David  Jenkins’ studies on combining cholesterol lowering food components (dietary portfolio) have been recognized as creating an effective dietary alternative to drug therapy (statins) for lower risk people.

Paul Moayyedi

Associate Senior Scientist

Professor, Department of Medicine (gastroenterology), and Assistant Dean, Research at McMaster University, Paul Moayyedi is Principal Investigator of the IMAGINE-SPOR study at PHRI, and leads the CIHR Strategy for Patient Oriented Research funded consortium across Canada evaluating impact of diet and the microbiome on inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome and related psychiatric disorders.

He received his medical education at Bristol University, and trained in gastroenterology at Leeds’ General Infirmary, UK. He was awarded a PhD and a Masters in Public Health from the University of Leeds. Moayyedi was a professor of gastroenterology health services research at the University of Birmingham before coming to McMaster to serve as the inaugural Richard Hunt/AstraZeneca Chair of Gastroenterology in 2004. He has been the director of the division of gastroenterology and currently holds the Audrey Campbell Chair of Ulcerative Colitis Research.

Lehana Thabane

Associate Senior Scientist

Lehana Thabane is Vice-President, Research, St. Joseph’s Hamilton, and Scientific Director of the Research Institute of St. Joe’s Hamilton. He is a Professor in the Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact, McMaster University. His research interests include clinical trials; pragmatic trials; pilot and feasibility trials; reporting of trials; systematic review methodology; and mentorship.

Lehana is a member of International Statistical Institute (elected member), American Statistical Association, International Society of Clinical Biostatistics, the Society for Clinical Trials, and the Statistical Society of Canada. He is a member of the member of the Working Groups for the CONSORT extension to pilot trials; and the CONSORT extension to trials using cohorts and routinely collected health data. Having mentored more than 100 MSc, PhD, and postdoc trainees, Lehana has won many teaching and mentorship awards, and is the clinical trials mentor for CIHR. He has co-authored more than 600 publications in peer-reviewed journals and more than 700 abstracts presented at national and international meetings.

Sandra Carroll

Associate Scientist

Sandra Carroll, PhD, is Associate Professor in the School of Nursing, McMaster University. She completed a CIHR Strategic Training Fellowship in the FUTURE Program for Cardiovascular Nurse Scientists, and a Post-Doctoral Fellowship through the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario/Michael G. DeGroote Chair in Cardiovascular Nursing Research.

Her research focus includes patients’ decision-making, decision support in the context of implantable defibrillators, patient preferences for cardiovascular treatments, and patient-reported outcomes in arrhythmia care.

Chandrima Chakraborty

Associate Scientist

Chandrima Chakraborty is Professor in the Department of English and Cultural Studies and Director of the Centre for Peace Studies and the Global Peace and Social Justice Program at McMaster University. She held the honorary title of University Scholar at McMaster University (2017-2021). She was elected to the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists in 2019.

Her research examines the intersections of nationalist history and public memory, race and nation-making in Canada, and the politics of memorialization in South Asia and Canada. Chakraborty’s recent publications examine the historical entanglement of race, racism and disease in Canadian public discourse. Her current research projects are studying the differential impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on South Asian, East Asian, and Black communities in Ontario.

Working in partnership with researchers in health sciences, and with community advocacy groups, the research seeks to engage marginalized populations and integrate their perspectives and lived experiences into future strategies to foster collective public health responses.

A co-edited book on anti-Asian racism during the COVID-19 pandemic titled, Yellow Peril Scrutinized: Anti-Asian Racism during the COVID-19 Pandemic, is under review with University of British Columbia Press.

Rahul Chanchlani

Associate Scientist

Rahul Chanchlani’s research program aims to promote interdisciplinary research collaborations among peers and experts to address knowledge gaps in key renal diseases such as acute kidney injury, kidney transplantation, hypertension and nephrotic syndrome among neonates and children. As principal investigator, his research on acute kidney injury and hypertension is supported by grants from Hamilton Health Sciences New Investigator Award (2017), Physician Services Incorporated Grant (2018), Kidney Foundation of Canada Grant (2019), and an Early Career Award by Hamilton Health Sciences (2020). Rahul has worked on PHRI’s START study to understand the determinants of adiposity and hypertension among newborns of South Asian origin in Canada and India.

He joined the Division of Nephrology in the Department of Pediatrics at McMaster Children’s Hospital as an Assistant Professor in September 2015. In November 2016, he finished his Master’s in Clinical Epidemiology (Institute of Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation) and Clinician Investigator Program from the University of Toronto. He is also an associate faculty in the Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact (HEI) at McMaster University. Rahul was appointed as an adjunct ICES scientist in February 2020.

Amit Garg

Associate Scientist

Amit Garg is the Associate Dean, Clinical Research, at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, Western University, has practiced as a staff nephrologist at the London Health Sciences Centre in London, Ontario, Canada since 2003, and is a Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Western University, with a cross-appointment in the Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact (HEI) at McMaster University. A past president of the Canadian Society of Nephrology, Amit Garg serves as the current Ontario Lead of the Kidney, Dialysis and Transplantation Program at ICES.

He values his ongoing collaborations with PJ Devereaux and other leading clinician-scientists at PHRI, which has led to several sub-studies funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research which examined the effects of perioperative interventions on the risk of acute kidney injury (off-pump cardiopulmonary bypass surgery) in the CORONARY study, and more. A current interest is in pragmatic randomized trials embedded into routine healthcare delivery.

Sarah McDonald

Associate Scientist

Sarah McDonald is a Maternal-Fetal Medicine specialist (high-risk obstetrician) and Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at McMaster University. Her research as a Clinician-Scientist is supported by a Tier II Canada Research Chair.

Her research focuses on preterm birth. Her research on primary and secondary prevention of preterm birth (i.e. prevention of preterm birth itself and of its sequelae) has informed several national guidelines from the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada (SOGC). She co-leads the Canadian Preterm Birth Network funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

Amber Molnar

Associate Scientist

Amber Molnar is a nephrologist at St. Joseph’s Healthcare in Hamilton, and Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine, Division of Nephrology, McMaster University. Her research program focuses on improving the pre-dialysis care of patients with advanced chronic kidney disease (CKD) and reducing cardiovascular complications in patients with CKD.

She holds a Kidney Research Scientist Core Education and National Training (KRESCENT) program’s New Investigator Award through CIHR and the Kidney Foundation of Canada. Amber earned her M.D. at the University of Saskatchewan followed by internal medicine training at Western University, and completed her nephrology and MSc (Epidemiology) training at the University of Ottawa.

Katherine Morrison

Associate Senior Scientist

Katherine Morrison is Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics, McMaster University, and a Principal Investigator for childhood risk factors research at PHRI. She has received various awards including the Excellence in Pediatric Research Award, and a Heart and Stroke Foundation Fellowship in Preventive Cardiology. Katherine is supported in her research by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Heart and Stroke Foundation, the Hamilton Academic Health Sciences Organization, and McMaster Children’s Hospital Foundation.

Neeraj Narula

Associate Senior Scientist

Neeraj Narula is Assistant Professor, Medicine, McMaster University, Director, IBD Clinic at McMaster, and staff gastroentereologist at Hamilton Health Sciences. His research interests are clinical epidemiology, nutrition, and interventional trials in inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), with a special focus on alternative therapies for inflammatory bowel disease. He is evaluating dietary interventions for Crohn’s disease and other alternative ways to modify the course of IBD (i.e. fecal microbiota transplantation).

Neeraj serves as Vice-President for the Canadian IBD Research Consortium. He has completed the Present-Levison advanced IBD fellowship in Mount Sinai Medical Centre in New York, an MPH at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health in Boston, and his Masters of Public Health at Harvard University.

Diana Sherifali

Associate Scientist

Diana Sherifali is an Associate Professor, School of Nursing, McMaster University, and clinical nurse specialist in the Diabetes Care and Research Program at Hamilton Health Sciences. She is also Director of the McMaster Evidence Review and Synthesis Team based in the School of Nursing. Her research focuses on optimizing the management of diabetes and quality of life of people with diabetes across the lifespan.

She received the inaugural Heather M. Arthur Population Health Research Institute / Hamilton Health Sciences Chair in Inter-Professional Health Research at McMaster University in 2019.

Deborah Siegal

Associate Senior Scientist

Deborah Siegal is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine within the Division of Hematology at the University of Ottawa. Her primary research interests include improving patient outcomes after anticoagulant-related bleeding; management of anticoagulants in patients who have acute bleeding complications or require urgent surgery; understanding the factors that influence patient and physician decision-making after anticoagulant-related bleeding; and reducing red blood cell transfusion by minimizing iatrogenic blood loss for laboratory testing.

With expertise in the design and conduct of pragmatic cluster randomized trials, individual patient randomized trials, mixed-methods studies, observational studies and meta-analyses, Deborah Siegal has received peer-reviewed grant support as principal investigator from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the American Society of Hematology, CanVECTOR/Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, Ontario AFP Innovation Fund, and Hamilton Health Sciences Foundation. She has published 70 peer-reviewed articles including several in high-impact journals such as The New England Journal of Medicine, Circulation, Blood, and Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis.

Eric Smith

Associate Senior Scientist

Eric Smith is a Professor of Clinical Neurosciences, and the Katthy Taylor Chair in Vascular Dementia in the Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Calgary, and Hotchkiss Brain Institute, and a member of the Calgary Stroke program. His research program has three main components: Population studies of brain health, using neuroimaging to identify predictors of cognitive impairment and decline; biomarker studies in patients with cognitive impairment, Alzheimer’s disease and cerebral amyloid angiopathy; and quality improvement and health outcomes research in patients with stroke and intracerebral hemorrhage. His research has been funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, Alberta Innovates – Health Solutions, Canadian Stroke Network, and the U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

He received his MD degree from McGill University in 1998 and completed a residency in Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, teaching hospitals of Harvard Medical School. A one-year fellowship in Stroke and Vascular Neurology was completed at Massachusetts General Hospital in 2003. He earned a Master of Public Health degree (MPH) from the Harvard School of Public Health in 2005.

Konstantinos Tselios

Associate Scientist

Konstantinos Tselios, PhD, is an Assistant Professor with the Division of Rheumatology, Department of Medicine at the McMaster University since January 2021. He earned his MD from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece in 2001 and completed his training in Internal Medicine in 2010. In 2013, he earned his PhD in Rheumatology from the same University. He came to Canada in 2014 as a post-doc Fellow in the Centre for Prognosis Studies in the Rheumatic Diseases, Department of Medicine, University of Toronto. In 2018, he completed his Master Teacher’s Program with the University of Toronto.

His main research interest is autoimmunity and systemic lupus erythematosus. He has published more than 70 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, and more than 80 abstracts in national and international congresses. He is currently establishing the McMaster Lupus Clinic Registry and Biobank with the financial support of Lupus Ontario to foster basic and clinical research in the field of lupus.

Ingrid Waldron

Associate Scientist

Ingrid Waldron is Professor and HOPE Chair in Peace and Health in the Global Peace and Social Justice Program at McMaster University, the Founder and Executive Director of the Environmental Noxiousness, Racial Inequities and Community Health Project (The ENRICH Project), and the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Canadian Coalition for Environmental and Climate Justice (CCECJ).

Her research focuses on the health and mental health impacts of social inequalities and discrimination in Black, Indigenous, and other racialized communities, including environmental racism and climate change inequities, mental illness, dementia, and COVID-19. Her research and advocacy on mental illness experienced by Black women in the Halifax Regional Municipality played a significant role in the creation of the Sisterhood Initiative, a new health service for Black women. Her research and advocacy, as well as her book There’s Something in the Water: Environmental Racism in Indigenous and Black Communities and her 2020 Netflix documentary of the same name have played a pivotal role in creating awareness about and addressing environmental racism.

In 2015, she co-developed with former politician Lenore Zann the first environmental racism private members bill in Nova Scotia (Bill 111) and in 2020, the first federal environmental racism private members’ bill (Bill C-226). Dr. Waldron has received numerous awards for her research, book and community advocacy, including the Education and Thought Leadership Award from Clean50 for her ENRICH Project, the Leadership in Advocacy Award from Research Canada, the Society for Socialist Studies Errol Sharpe Book Prize for her book There’s Something in the Water:, the Atlantic Book Award for Scholarly Writing for her book, the President’s Research Excellence Award – Research Impact from Dalhousie University, and the Advocate of the Year Award from Springtide Collective.

David Collister

Associate Investigator

David Collister is a nephrologist at the University of Alberta Hospital and Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Nephrology, at the University of Alberta. He completed a PhD in Health Research Methodology at McMaster University and research fellowship at the Population Health Research Institute (PHRI) focused on run-in periods and patient oriented research in kidney disease including the DISCO-RLS trial.

His research program focuses on symptom management in patients with kidney disease and, in particular, randomized controlled trials of therapies to alleviate symptoms in chronic kidney disease and dialysis. He currently holds a Kidney Research Scientist Core Education and National Training (KRESCENT) New Investigator Award. His research program is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Kidney Foundation of Canada. He is the principal investigator of RESET-DIALYSIS, a prospective cohort study of patients with advanced chronic kidney disease initiating dialysis which will examine the responsiveness of uremic symptoms to dialysis and uremic symptom pathophysiology with metabolomics, proteomics and genomics. He is the principal investigator of DISCO-POT, a randomized controlled trial of nabilone versus placebo for the treatment of uremic pruritus in adults with kidney failure treated with dialysis. He is also interested in the intersection between transgender, non-binary and gender diverse populations and kidney disease.

Russell De Souza

Associate Scientist

Russell De Souza, a registered dietitian and nutritional epidemiologist, focuses his research on dietary factors that influence chronic disease throughout the lifespan, with a particular interest in macronutrients, dietary patterns and cardiovascular disease.

He received his doctoral degree in nutritional epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health. He completed post-doctoral training in systematic reviews and randomized trial methodology jointly at McMaster University, and at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.

Emmanuelle Duceppe

Associate Scientist

Emmanuelle Duceppe is a principal scientist with Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM) Research Centre in Montreal, Quebec. She is also an internist and clinical assistant professor, Department of Medicine, Université de Montréal.

Her research interests include: prediction of preoperative risk in non-cardiac surgery; perioperative interventions and clinical outcomes in non-cardiac surgery; biomarkers for prediction and early identification of perioperative complications; pre- and postoperative management of patients in day surgery; statistical methodology for predictive model development; and cohort studies and clinical trials.

MyLinh Duong

Associate Scientist

MyLinh Duong is a respirologist at Hamilton Health Sciences, and Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, McMaster University. Her research interests include respiratory epidemiology, and understanding the environmental and social determinants of lung development and lung function. She is the respiratory lead for a number of PHRI’s population-based studies including PURE, FAMILY and the global heart failure registry, G-CHF.

She obtained her medical degree, specialist and sub-specialist training in Internal Medicine, Sleep Medicine and Respiratory Medicine at the University of Adelaide, Australia. This was followed by a research fellowship in the areas of airway inflammation, asthma and COPD at the Firestone Clinic and McMaster University, Canada, where she obtained a Master’ degree in Health Research Methodology and Epidemiology.

Steffen Blum

Associate Investigator

Steffen Blum worked with PHRI to build up a cohort of patients with myocardial injury of non-cardiac surgery (MINS), who are undergoing cardiac imaging with positron emission tomography for further risk stratification. Additionally, he is involved in the ASPIRE-AF and COP-AF trials and undergoes advanced training in nuclear cardiac imaging at the McMaster affiliated hospitals.

Blum was supervised as a clinical and research fellow at PHRI and McMaster University, supervised by PHRI scientist David Conen. He completed medical school at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria. Blum is a Swiss board-certified internist, and has been a resident in cardiology at the University Hospital Basel, Switzerland, where he also completed his PhD in Clinical Research.

Linda Johnson

Associate Investigator

Linda Johnson is an Imaging Specialist and an Associate Professor of Cardiovascular Epidemiology at Lund University in Sweden. Her main research interest is atrial fibrillation prediction using diverse diagnostic modalities. Other interests are modifiable risk factors and disease prevention. She has been working with the PHRI Arrhythmia Research group since 2017.

Hira Mian

Associate Investigator

Hira Mian is a hematologist at the Juravinski Cancer Centre and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Oncology, McMaster University where she specializes in multiple myeloma. Hira completed her clinical training at the University of Toronto, and furthered her research training at McMaster where she obtained her Masters in Health Research Methodology, and completed the Royal College Accredited Clinician Investigator Program.

Hira’s research interests center around clinical trials and health services and outcomes, with a specific focus on disparities in access to care/outcomes and quality of life among patients with myeloma. She is involved in research activities with the Canadian Myeloma Research Group (CMRG), the Canadian Cancer Clinical Trials Group, as well as the International Society of Geriatric Oncology. She also currently holds local research grants.

Ryo Naito

Associate Investigator

After working as a cardiologist for more than 10 years in Japan, Ryo Naito became a PHRI Research Fellow in 2018, joining the PURE study team. His research interests include preventive cardiology, heart failure, and ischemic heart disease. He is now an Associate Investigator at PHRI.

Tim O’Shea

Associate Investigator

Tim O’Shea is an Associate Professor, Department of Medicine (divisions of general internal medicine and infectious diseases), McMaster University. He has travelled and worked extensively in East Africa in both general internal medicine and infectious diseases. His academic interests include medical education and the care of marginalized populations such as people affected by poverty, homelessness and addiction.

He has been involved in implementing a Global Health curriculum for the McMaster University Internal Medicine Residency Program. Tim completed his medical degree at McMaster University and a Masters of Public Health at Harvard University. He trained in internal medicine, infectious diseases and medical microbiology at McMaster, and is Royal College certified in each of these disciplines.

Jeremy Petch

Associate Investigator

Jeremy Petch is Director, Digital Health Innovation, Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS), where his team employs machine learning to data streaming from continuous remote monitoring devices to develop improved early-warning systems for patients recovering from surgery. They are also developing a range of patient and clinician-facing applications in the areas of virtual care and improving clinical workflow.

He is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto’s Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, and has a PhD in Philosophy (Health Policy Ethics) from York University.

Ted Scott

Associate Collaborator

Ted Scott is Chief Innovation Officer, and Acting Vice-President, Research, Hamilton Health Sciences. He is Chair of the Synapse Life Sciences Consortium in Hamilton, and was previously Chief Innovation Officer and Dean of Applied Research at Mohawk College, where he studied Radiography and Sonography.

He is an expert digital health strategist and has a wealth of experience in industry relations and procurement, as well as innovation policy. He returned to HHS where he started his career as a sonographer after working at The Hospital for Sick Children and Huntsville District Memorial Hospital. Ted is a lifelong learner who earned his Masters of Applied Science in Medical Ultrasound and his PhD in Diagnostic Imaging from Charles Sturt University of Australia.

Sukrit Narula

Associate Research Fellow

Sukrit Narula is currently pursuing his MD at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City and his PhD in Health Research Methods program at McMaster University. He completed his undergraduate studies at Stanford University. His research involves using biobanks collected as a part of randomized trials and large epidemiologic studies to elucidate the pathophysiology underlying cardiovascular disease.

He is currently doing work on PURE Biomarker, a substudy of the PURE study to understand the prognostic importance of genetics and new serum biomarkers in a global context. Sukrit also has research interests in cardiovascular imaging, vascular disease, evidence-based medicine, and meta-research. He is supervised by Guillaume Pare and Salim Yusuf.

Danielle de Sa Boasquevisque

Associate Research Fellow

Danielle de Sa Boasquevisque is an Associate Research Fellow at PHRI, supervised by Ashkan Shoamanesh, and is pursuing a Masters in Health Research Methodology at McMaster University. At PHRI, she is a co-Investigator in the ENRICH-AF trial and Project Officer for the CATIS-ICAD trial.

She obtained her MD from Federal University of Espirito Santo in Brazil and has completed internal medicine and neurology training in Sao Paulo, Brazil. In 2018, she completed her MSc in Neuroscience at Albert Einstein Institute/Sao Paulo, Brazil where she studied safety of transcranial direct current stimulation in patients after ischemic stroke. She also pursued a two-year clinical Stroke fellowship at McMaster University from 2018 to 2020.

Danielle has research interests in vascular neurology including acute stroke, neuro-rehabilitation, intracranial atherosclerotic disease and intracerebral hemorrhage. She is currently implementing an ICH cohort study and performing systematic review regarding ICH related outcomes.

Emily Wong

Associate Research Fellow

Emily Wong is currently pursuing her MD at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto. She holds a Bachelor of Health Sciences (Honours) from McMaster University. Her research interests involve data collected from randomized clinical trials and extensive epidemiologic studies to elucidate the pathophysiology and risk factors of inflammatory bowel disease.

Currently, she is involved in the PURE study to understand the role of nutrition and lifestyle factors in the pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel disease. She is also involved in the PURE Biomarker sub-study to identify new prognostic serum biomarkers. Emily also has a keen interest in improving patient outcomes using medical imaging, minimally invasive techniques, and artificial intelligence. She is supervised by PHRI Associate Senior Scientist Neeraj Narula.

Gita Wahi

Associate Investigator

Gita Wahi’s research is dedicated to enhancing the health and well-being of children and families, particularly those at risk for or experiencing childhood obesity. Her work emphasizes health promotion and the development of effective treatment strategies in collaboration with families. Key areas of her research include investigating the prevalence, causes, and treatment of childhood obesity, addressing health disparities by focusing on underrepresented populations, and engaging in community-based research to ensure culturally relevant interventions. Wahi’s research is deeply integrated with her clinical practice, allowing her findings to be directly applied to improve patient care. She also collaborates with various organizations to amplify the impact of her work.

Atul Verma

Associate Scientist

Atul Verma is the Director of Cardiology for the McGill University Health Centre and the Isadore Rosenfeld Chair in Cardiology. He is an electrophysiologist with an interest in complex ablation, particularly for AF and VT; new technologies; and clinical trials. He has over 300 peer-reviewed publications including the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and the Lancet. He is an international expert in pulsed field ablation and other novel technologies for cardiac ablation. He has also served as Chair or on the Writing Committee of both national and international guidelines for AF.