Research Meet & Greet
Join us for this Annual introduction to the research that is being conducted in our department. This is a wonderful opportunity for faculty and students to meet and mingle, and to share information about some of the many research opportunities available. We look forward to seeing you.
When: Monday, September 19, 2022, 4 to 5:30 p.m.
Where: 2001 不良研究所 College Avenue, Rooms 1135 - 1140
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Participating faculty members:
Dr. Andrea Benedetti -听Biostatistics
Andrea Benedetti is a biostatistician and Associate professor jointly appointed in the departments of Medicine and Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health. Dr. Benedetti is an author on over 200 peer-reviewed articles. She holds operating funds from CIHR. She is a director of the DEPRESSD Collaboration (). Her research interests are primarily in statistical challenges in individual patient data meta analysis with applications in depression screening and multiple drug-resistant tuberculosis.
Dr. Qihuang Zhang - Noisy data, Statistical genomics, Machine learning, Spatial statistics
With the advance in genomics sequencing technology, it is now feasible to generate genomic data while recording their spatial locations. Meanwhile, the availability of biomedical imaging data has substantially improved in recent years, providing rich information of disease regions in tissues. My research program aims at combining machine learning methods and statistical modeling to leverage the spatial information of imaging biomarkers and genomic data. This program contains two research aims. The first objective is to understand the spatial relationship between imaging data and spatial genomic data. We first use machine learning methods to identify spatial biomarkers of clinical interest from biological imaging data such as histology. Then, statistical models, such as the point process models, are developed to study the association between spatial genomic data and the identified spatial biomarkers. The second objective is to develop statistical methods to quantify the uncertainty of the results produced from machine learning models. We propose statistical models to address the measurement error and misclassification that are associated with synthesis data produced by the machine learning algorithm. This research program can enable clinical practitioners to identify the gene set that might regulate the location of the cells and can also be applied in oncology research to understand how genes influence the progression of cancer.
Dr. Alton Russell - Decision Analysis
The Decision Modeling lab aims to enable the efficient and effective use of finite healthcare resources by developing, assessing, and applying data-driven methods to inform health policy and clinical decisions. Our interdisciplinary research uses methods from decision analysis, simulation, health economics, operations research, epidemiology, and data science.
Dr. Celia Greenwood听 - Genetic Epidemiology; Statistical Genetics Methods Development in Genetics, Genomics and high dimensional data
My interests lie in developing methods of analysis for genetic data and for high dimensional data of various types including omic data. I have many collaborations where these methods are used for identifying associations with various diseases and traits and identifying individuals at risk. Recent projects include methods for development of genetic risk scores, analysis of DNA methylation data, and finding outliers in high dimensional data. I collaborate with researchers working on aging, autoimmune disease, cognitive development and cancer.
Dr. Laurent Azoulay - Pharmacoepidemiology
Dr. Laurent Azoulay is an Associate Professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health (primary) and Gerald Bronfman Department of Oncology, 不良研究所. His research program primarily focuses on the effects of commonly-prescribed drugs on the incidence of cancer in large populations, as well as on the effectiveness and safety of cancer treatments.
Dr. Kristian Filion - Pharmacoepidemiology
Dr. Filion is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Medicine and of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Occupational Health and a William Dawson Scholar at 不良研究所. He is also a Senior Investigator at the Center for Clinical Epidemiology of the Lady Davis Institute of the Jewish General Hospital. His research program is focused on pharmacoepidemiology and the use of large, population-based databases to study the effectiveness, safety, and utilization of prescription drugs in real-world settings. The primary substantive area of his research is cardiometabolic conditions, including cardiovascular disease and diabetes. He also conducts some research in women鈥檚 health. Dr. Filion is a Steering Committee member of the Canadian Network for Observational Drug Effect Studies (CNODES), a pan-Canadian drug safety network funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. He is supported by a Senior salary support award from the Fonds de recherche du Qu茅bec 鈥� sant茅 (Quebec Foundation for Research 鈥� Health) and was elected as a Fellow of the American Heart Association. In addition, Dr. Filion is involved in several systematic reviews and meta-analyses examining drug safety and effectiveness.
Dr. Robert Platt - Pharmacoepidemiology
Pharmacoepidemiology is the study of use and effects of medications in large populations. Although medications undergo a rigorous regulatory approval process, clinical trials are limited in their ability to assess the use, effectiveness, and safety of medications in a real world setting. Pharmacoepidemiology addresses this knowledge gap through studies of drug utilization, comparative effectiveness, and adverse drug reactions in everyday clinical practice, often through the application of sophisticated epidemiologic and statistical approaches to large, population-based databases. 不良研究所 researchers are at the forefront of study in areas such as cancer, diabetes, respiratory medicine, and neurology, and in methods development and evaluation.
Dr. Samy Suissa - Pharmacoepidemiology
Dr. Suissa鈥檚 research is in the area of pharmacoepidemiology, which involves studying the risks and benefits of medications in the population at large and in the real world setting of clinical practice. He specializes in the exploitation of existing computerized health databases to rapidly evaluate these effects. He has developed new methods of data analysis and study design that allow more rapid and accurate assessments of drug effects. He has conducted pharmacoepidemiological studies of several medications used for the treatment of chronic diseases, including asthma and COPD, cardiovascular and rheumatic diseases, and women鈥檚 health issues. He has lectured extensively throughout the world, and is the author of over 500 peer-reviewed research papers published in scientific journals. He leads the Canadian Network for Observational Drug Effect Studies (CNODES), a team of over 60 scientists across the country collaborating to evaluate the effects of medications used by Canadians.
Prof. Mathieu Maheu-Giroux - Population Health, Infectious Diseases, Mathematical Modeling
Mathieu Maheu-Giroux is an interdisciplinary population health scientist and he currently holds the Canada Research Chair in Population Health Modeling (Tier 2). His work focuses primarily on: 1) infectious disease modeling, 2) epidemiology and measurements, and 3) impact and economic evaluations of public health interventions. The overarching objective of his research is to support the development of evidence-based policies and interventions to improve population health with an emphasis on controlling/eliminating infectious diseases. Examples of some ongoing projects:
鈥� HIV transmission among men who have sex with men in Qu茅bec
鈥� Cervical cancer elimination in high HIV prevalence settings
鈥� Micro-elimination of hepatitis C virus in priority populations
鈥� Optimizing HIV testing services to end AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa
鈥� Impacts of structural drivers of HIV transmission among priority populations
Dr. Yassen Tcholakov - Nunavik Department of Public Health
The Nunavik Regional Board of Health and Social Services (NRBHSS) is an organization dedicated to improving the health and well-being of the populations of the 14 communities on its territory. Its overall mission is to adapt the health and social service programs to the population's needs and to the region's realities. The Department of Public Health is responsible for management of the regional public-health program. For that purpose, it establishes priorities, organizes services and allocates resources. Jointly with various partners, including the two health institutions, the Department of Public Health ensures application of the regional public-health program, which covers:
鈥� Health Protection, including the areas of infectious diseases and environmental contaminants. This sector includes the identification of risks for the population and the deployment of the necessary response measures;
鈥� Disease Prevention;
鈥� Health Promotion;
鈥� Surveillance of the population鈥檚 state of health and communication and awareness about health.
Students could contribute to applied public health research in an intercultural context in a remote indigenous region in Canada in some of the following areas to the work of the organisation:
鈥� Field epidemiology, outbreak investigation and control;
鈥� Setting up, improving and evaluating public health surveillance systems;
鈥� Creation a wastewater surveillance system;
鈥� Evaluating access to clean water;
鈥� Creating a Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) surveillance system;
鈥� Disease of importance: Tuberculosis, STBBIs (especially syphilis), Respiratory Infections, Vaccine preventable diseases.
Dr. Natalie Dayan - Reproductive, Perinatal and Pediatric Epidemiology/Clinical Epidemiology & Informatics
Dr Dayan's research focuses on cardiometabolic health throughout the puerperium, pregnancy outcomes in women with chronic medical conditions and those who conceive with fertility therapy. She is also interested in predicting those that may be at risk for a chronic condition during pregnancy and severe maternal morbidity, as well as following the health of those affected long-term.
Dr. Mabel Carabali - Social Epidemiology, Infectious Diseases and Global Health
Development and application of epidemiologic methods or methodological approaches to account for measurement error to improve the use of surveillance data, methods to assess health inequalities including decomposition and mediation analyses, and Bayesian spatiotemporal analyses in the context of infectious diseases, and social determinants of health and health disparities.
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