IAB Members - Biographies
(September 2003 - August 2004)
Dr. Paul Armstrong is Professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and Director of the Canadian VIGOUR Centre. He is Director of the CIHR program training grant TORCH (TomorrOw's Research Cardiovascular Health Professionals) that represents a synergistic partnership between the universities of Alberta and Calgary. He is a Senior Attending Cardiologist at the University of Alberta Hospital with particular interest and expertise in acute coronary care and heart failure. In the latter capacity he serves as Director of the University of Alberta Hospital Heart Function Clinic. Dr. Armstrong received his medical degree at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada and after post-graduate training both there and at the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada he undertook clinical and research training in cardiology at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, MA, USA and St. George's Hospital, London, UK.
Dr. Armstrong's investigative career has developed along two major lines of inquiry. The first involved the study of the pathophysiology and novel therapeutic approaches of congestive heart failure using an experimental model as well as undertaking clinical investigative studies. The second, which is now his principal focus, involves the pathophysiology, diagnosis and management of acute coronary syndromes. He has a particular interest in the analysis of international differences in the process of cardiovascular care and their implications for the Canadian health care system.
Dr. Armstrong is the author, or co-author of over 300 peer reviewed publications and a member of the editorial board of a number of publications, including the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Canadian Journal of Cardiology, the American Heart Journal and Circulation Section Editor of New Frontiers. He also serves as a member on the FDA Cardiovascular and Renal Drugs Advisory Committee. In 1993, Dr. Armstrong received the Research Achievement Award from the Canadian Cardiovascular Society, and in 1998, the Award of Merit from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada for contributions to medical research.
André Cantin, MD, LMCC, CSPQ, FRCPC (Chair)
Dr. André Cantin obtained his MD degree at the University of Sherbrooke in 1978, and subsequently trained in Internal Medicine and Respiratory Medicine at the same institution from 1979 - 1982. He became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada with certification in Pulmonary Medicine in 1983. He completed a fellowship at the National Institutes of Health in the Pulmonary Division under the supervision of Dr. Ronald G. Crystal from 1982 - 1985. He has been a member of the Pulmonary Division at the University of Sherbrooke since 1985 and is currently a professor in the Department of Medicine. His research interests are in the areas of lung inflammation, oxidants and antioxidants in pulmonary fibrosis and cystic fibrosis. He is currently the chair of the Medical and Scientific Advisory Board of the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and was the chair of the Respiratory System grants committee at the Medical Research Council of Canada from 1998 - 2000. He is also the director of the Special Programme in Applied Research and Therapeutics (SPARX1) of the CCFF, a programme designed to accelerate the development of novel therapies for lung disease in patients with cystic fibrosis.
Jacques de Champlain, MD, PhD
Dr. Jacques de Champlain received his M.D. degree from the Faculty of Medicine (Université de Montréal) and his Ph.D. degree in the Department of Investigative Medicine (McGill University). He is Professor in the Departments of Physiology and Medicine (Université de Montréal) and an active member of the Research Center of the Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur de Montréal. He is the Director of the Research Group on Autonomic Nervous System which regroups 31 senior scientists whose research interests are mainly oriented on the investigation of autonomic functions in the regulation of the cardiovascular system in health and diseases.
Dr. de Champlain is the recipient of numerous prizes and honors including the Izaak Walton Killam Memorial prize from the Canada Council, the Wilder-Penfield Prize from the Government of the Province of Quebec, and the McLaughlin Medal from the Royal Society of Canada. He is also an Officer of the Order of Canada and of the Order of Quebec, as well as Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Roxanne Deslauriers, PhDDr. Roxanne Deslauriers received a B.Sc. in Experimental Biology from l'Université Laval in 1968. She received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Ottawa in 1972 working with Dr. Ian C. P. Smith on biological applications of magnetic resonance. Since then she has been at the National Research Council of Canada (NRC), Ottawa and Winnipeg. She is currently Director of Research at the NRC Institute for Biodiagnostics in Winnipeg. She has published over 180 scientific articles. Her current focus is on biomedical applications of non-invasive spectroscopic and imaging techniques. Current projects focus on protection of the heart and brain during heart surgery and on early detection of rejection in transplanted kidneys. She is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, NMR in Biomedicine and the Canadian Journal of Analytical Sciences and Spectroscopy. She is a Fellow of the Society of Magnetic Resonance and an elected member of the Board of Trustees of International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM).
Dana V. Devine, PhD
Dr. Dana V. Devine received her PhD in Immunology from Duke University, North Carolina, 1986. In 1987, she joined the Canadian Red Cross Society Blood Services as a scientist and accepted her first faculty position with the University of British Columbia where she is currently a Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and an Associate Member of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. She is also a faculty associate of the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at UBC. In 1999 she was appointed national Director of Research & Development for Canadian Blood Services. Her central focus of research for the past decade has been platelet biology, complement biochemistry, blood coagulation and transfusion medicine. This research has been funded by the MRC/CIHR, the Heart and Stroke Foundation and Canadian Blood Services. She has published over 80 peer-reviewed publications, book chapters and invited reviews. Dr. Devine is a former Vice-President of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of BC and Yukon.
Gregory Downey, MD, FRCPC, FCCP
Dr. Gregory Downey currently holds research funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and National Institutes of Health (USA). His research program has focused on cell signaling in regulation of leukocyte function as it pertains to lung inflammation in sepsis and acute lung injury and pulmonary host defense. One major theme of his research program pertains to the importance of the cytoskeleton in the regulation of cellular biophysical properties and transmembrane and intracellular signaling pathways. A second major area has been the delineation of the importance of intracellular signaling pathways in regulation of leukocyte activation. Included in this area are his studies investigating the regulation of adhesion, oxidant production, and phagocytosis. A closely related area pertains to the role of tyrosine phosphatases such as CD45 and SHP-1 in regulation of leukocyte activation.
Peter Glynn, PhD
Dr. Glynn is a consultant on health care policy, planning, governance and management, both in Canada and internationally. In June 2000, after ten years service, he retired from the position of President and Chief Executive Officer of the Kingston General Hospital, a 450-bed teaching hospital affiliated with Queen's University. During that period, he led the hospital through an unprecedented period of reform and financial constraint. Formerly, he was the Assistant Deputy Minister, Health Services and Promotion Branch, Health and Welfare Canada and, prior to that, the Associate Deputy Minister of Health for the Province of Saskatchewan.
He has been a member of, and chaired, many task forces, committees and organizations in health care and health research. He was a member of both the CIHR Task Force and the Interim Governing Council. He has been a member of the Board of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada and the National Cancer Institute of Canada. He is the Chair of the Board of the Institute of Clinical Evaluative Sciences and the Chair of the Governing Council of the Centre for Studies in Primary Care at Queen's University. He is also the Chair of the Saskatchewan Surgical Care Network.
Dr. Glynn is an Associate Professor (Adjunct) in the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology at Queen's University. He has received recognition from many health organizations and universities for leadership and innovative thinking. Dr. Glynn holds a Bachelor of Engineering from the Royal Military College of Canada and a Ph.D. in Engineering from the University of Waterloo.
Frances Gregor, MN, PhDDr. Frances Gregor is an Associate Professor in the School of Nursing, Dalhousie University, and holds an honourary appointment in the Patient and Family Learning Centre of the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre. She obtained her professional training in nursing at the Montreal General Hospital and her academic training at Dalhousie University, from which she was awarded the baccalaureate (1967) and master's degree (1979) in Nursing and a PhD in the Sociology of Education (1994). Her research in education as a component of health care has focused on patients, care providers and the organizational dimensions of educative work in hospitals. More recently she has begun to study components of professional nurse preparation. Dr. Gregor served as the President of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Nova Scotia (1984-88) and of Canada (1993-95) and is the 2000 recipient of the Distinguished Service Award.
Antoine Hakim, MD, PhDDr. Antoine Hakim began his medical career as an engineer! At the age of 30 he started his medical training at Albany Medical College in Albany, N.Y. because a number of Canadian medical schools he applied to considered him too old to start a new career! After a year of internship he began his residency training in Neurology at the Montreal Neurological Institute, which he completed in 1979. His research into cerebral metabolism led him to appreciate the complexities of brain function, which coupled with his clinical interest in stroke, led him to an eminent career in cerebral ischemia research. He has published extensively on the perfusion and metabolic aspects of stroke and the molecular determinants of ischemic brain injury. He has also conducted a number of clinical trials into various aspects of stroke therapy. His major research accomplishments include a description of the ischemic penumbra, those brain regions that may be salvageable in a stroke, and thus contributed importantly to the era of acute stroke therapy that has resulted in effective new drugs becoming available to stroke patients. When he moved to the University of Ottawa in 1992 he recruited clinician scientists and basic investigators from both Canada and the US who brought national prominence to the clinical and research activities in neuroscience. More recently, investigators across Canada asked Dr. Hakim to lead a proposal to establish a Network of Centres of Excellence in Stroke. This was approved in 1999. He has actively promoted the interests of science to lead to better health for Canadians.
Pavel Hamet, MD, PhD, CSPQ, FRCPA Canadian citizen, born in the Czech Republic, Dr. Pavel Hamet completed his medical studies at Charles University, Prague. After being awarded a Centennial Fellow from the Medical Research Council in 1973, he studied endocrinology and physiology at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, from July 1973 to June 1975. He is Director of Research, Research Centre of the Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal, and Professor at the Departments of Medicine, Physiology and Nutrition at the University of Montreal and Adjunct Professor at the Department of Medicine at McGill University. Dr. Hamet is the author and co-author of over 350 manuscripts, published in well-recognized peer-reviewed journals and books of scientific interest.
Dr. Hamet receives financial support from major funding institutions, such the Medical Research Council of Canada and the National Institutes of Health (USA) as well as from the pharmaceutical industry. He was President of the Canadian Hypertension Society and Secretary of the International Society of Hypertension. He received many prizes, including the "Harry Goldblatt Award" from the American Heart Association in 1990 for his achievements in the field of hypertension. In 1994, he was appointed Honorary Professor of the Shanghai II Medical University, Shanghai, China and he received the Golden Medal of J.E. Purkyne of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic the same year. In 1996, Dr. Hamet received the Distinguished Scientist Award of The Canadian Society for Clinical and the Achievement Award of the Canadian Cardiovascular Society in 1998.
Dr. Hamet serves on many national and international boards including Medical Research Council of Canada/Rx&D, Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), Centre d'entreprises et d'innovation de Montréal, BioCapital Inc., PharmaVision Inc., Montreal TechnoVision Inc., Vasogen Inc., ConjuChem Inc., Angiogene Inc.
Kathryn King, PhDDr. Kathryn King is an Associate Professor and Heritage Population Health Investigator in the Faculty of Nursing and Department of Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary. She earned a BSc in Nursing from McMaster University in 1980 and a Masters and PhD in Nursing from the University of Alberta in 1993 and 1997 respectively. She undertook post-doctoral training in the Faculty of Medicine, Division of Cardiology (EPICORE Centre) between 1997 and 1999 and was appointed to the University of Calgary in 1999. Her multi-methods program of research, funded by AHFMR, SSHRC and CIHR, focuses on recovery from cardiac events. In particular she has examined the influences of gender/sex and ethnocultural affiliation on various components of cardiac recovery. Dr. King served as the national research chairperson for the Canadian Council of Cardiovascular nurses between 1998 and 2003.
Peter Liu, MD
Dr. Peter Liu's current appointments include the Heart and Stroke/Polo Chair Professor of Medicine and Physiology, University Health Network, Director, Heart & Stroke/Richard Lewar Centre of Excellence in Cardiovascular Research, University of Toronto, and Associate Director, Division of Cardiology, University of Toronto. He is also the current Director of the CIHR Group Program in Heart Failure (CHF-CORE), the CIHR Canadian Heart Failure Interdisciplinary Health Research Network (CHFNET), the CIHR Strategic Program in Training for Cardiovascular Excellence (TACTICS), and is current Chair of the Scientific Program Committee, Heart Failure Society of America.
Dr. Liu received an M.D. from the University of Toronto in 1978. He completed his postgraduate training in Internal Medicine and Cardiology at University of Toronto, Cardiovascular Training & Research at Harvard Medical School, Boston, and Clinical Epidemiology at McMaster University. Dr. Liu's recent honours include the A.L. Burton Lecturer from the University of Western Ontario in 2002, the John Foerster Research Award, University of Manitoba in 2003, the Rick Gallop Research Excellence Award, Heart & Stroke Foundation of Ontario/Canada in 2003, and Research Achievement Award, Canadian Cardiovascular Society in 2003.
Dr. Liu is the author or coauthor of over 200 peer review publications, including Nature, Nature Medicine, New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Circulation, Circulation Research, etc., and 20 book chapters. His areas of research interest include Inflammatory and immune mechanisms of cardiovascular disease; role of host responses to cardiovascular injury in producing heart failure, investigated through the use of transgenic mouse models; and translation of heart failure investigation from the bench to the bedside through clinical trials & health service research.
Dr. Graham Nichol is an Associate Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology and Community Medicine, at University of Ottawa. He completed his Doctor of Medicine in 1988 and internal medicine training at the University of Western Ontario. During this time, he developed an interest in learning how to choose which health interventions should be used to improve care. Then he completed a fellowship focused on an evaluation of the effectiveness and costs of use of treatments for patients with sudden cardiac arrest. He subsequently completed a two-year fellowship in clinical epidemiology at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard School of Public Health (MPH 95).
The aim of Dr. Nichol's research is to develop, implement, evaluate and disseminate effective and inexpensive interventions for cardiovascular disease including drugs and devices; social, educational or economic interventions; and simple interventions available at onset of acute cardiovascular event. Dr. Nichol has focused his career on applied and methodological research related to the evaluation of the effectiveness and efficiency of cardiovascular interventions because cardiovascular disease is common, lethal, debilitating and costly.
Since he volunteered in New York City on September 11, 2001, his mission has become to improve outcomes after resuscitation from sudden cardiac arrest or traumatic injury.
Paul M. O'Byrne, MD
Dr. Paul M. O'Byrne obtained his Medical Degree at University College, Dublin and his training in Internal Medicine and Respiratory Medicine, McMaster University. He undertook research training under the supervision of Dr. Freddy Hargreave at McMaster University and then Dr. Jay A. Nadel at the Cardiovascular Research Institute in San Francisco.
His research interests are on the mechanisms and treatment of asthma with particular reference to the role of environmental allergens and the mechanisms by which these cause airway inflammation.
Dr. O'Byrne is currently the E.J. Moran Campbell Professor of Medicine, and Head of the Division of Respiratory Medicine at McMaster University. He has published 205 peer reviewed papers, has edited 8 books and more than 80 review papers. Dr. O'Byrne is the Deputy Editor of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
Grant Pierce, PhD, FACC, FIACSDr. Grant Pierce received his PhD in Physiology studying the subcellular basis of diabetic cardiomyopathy. His postdoctoral work on ion transport biochemistry was carried out at UCLA under the supervision of Drs Glenn Langer and Ken Philipson. He was appointed as a Faculty member in the Department of Physiology at the University of Manitoba and is currently a tenured Professor there. Dr. Pierce is Director of the Division of Stroke & Vascular Disease at St. Boniface General Hospital Research Centre in Winnipeg and Director of the National Centre for Agri-food Research in Medicine. He has served on a number of committees for the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, MRC, NIH, etc. He has also served on editorial boards for the American Journal of Physiology, Circulation Research, the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology and is Assistant Editor of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry.
Brian K. Rutt, PhD
Dr. Brian Rutt is currently a Scientist at the Robarts Research Institute and a Professor at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, where he has been since 1986. Dr. Rutt received graduate degrees from Stanford University and the University of Toronto. He pursued postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Francisco.
Dr. Rutt's research is focused on quantitative measurement of anatomical and functional characteristics of the vasculature using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). He leads several ongoing projects involving the development of improved methods for acquiring and displaying MR angiograms i.e. images of blood vessels, and assessing atherosclerotic plaque composition, morphology and vulnerability by MRI. He also works on the development of high-speed MRI techniques that will allow the acquisition of complete image sets in seconds rather than minutes. This research is aimed at solving the very real problem of low patient throughput in clinical MRI departments, and in addition is aimed at the development of dynamic scanning methods. Dr. Rutt is also working in the area of MRI hardware development and specifically the development of advanced "receiver coils", which receive the very weak magnetic signals that emanate from the patient's body, and advanced "gradient coils" which produce the spatial resolution in MR images. These coil developments are aimed at improving image quality by customizing coils to patient anatomy.
Jack Siemiatycki, PhD
Dr. Jack Siemiatycki received an MSc in Statistics in 1972, and a PhD in Epidemiology in 1976, both from McGill University. He has spent most of his career at the Institut Armand-Frappier (U du Québec). He has worked closely with the International Agency for Research on Cancer. He has made research contributions in health survey methodology, epidemiology of childhood diabetes, water quality and GI infections and cancer epidemiology. It is the latter that has occupied the major part of his research for over 25 years. He has contributed to the development of novel methods of exposure assessment for investigation of environmental/occupational causes of cancer, and has carried out large population-based case-control studies of cancer, focusing in particular on occupational exposures. His over 100 peer-reviewed publications cover many methodological and substantive issues. He has served on several national and international expert panels, including grant review panels, government mandated panels and private agency panels. He has been an associate editor of major journals.
Dr. Verna Skanes is Adjunct Professor of Immunology in the Faculty of Medicine at Memorial University of Newfoundland. For several years, she was Assistant Dean for Research and Graduate Studies in that Faculty. She has also served as Interim Dean of Medicine and Director of the Newfoundland and Labrador Centre for Health Research. Currently, Dr. Skanes is Chair of the Board of Directors of Canadian Blood Services, Chair of the Selection Committee of the Networks of Centres of Excellence Program and a member of the Minister's Advisory Board of the Atlantic Innovation Fund. Dr. Skanes was a member of the Medical Research Council's Standing Committee on Ethics and has served as consultant to the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador on research ethics issues.
