Dr. Laurent Brochard is the Keenan Chair in Critical Care and Respiratory Medicine, as well as a scientist in the Critical Care Department of St. Michael’s Hospital.
His research interests include Acute Respiratory Failure, Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, Mechanical Ventilation, including Noninvasive Ventilation, Patient-Ventilator Interaction, Extubation and Weaning from Mechanical Ventilation.
Dr. Lu Chen graduated from Xiangya Medical School (Hunan, China) in 2004. He completed his specialist training in Intensive Care Medicine, supervised by Dr. Jian-Xin Zhou in Beijing Tiantan Hospital (Beijing, China). He worked with Dr. Marco Ranieri as a visiting scholar in Molinette Hospital (Turin, Italy) for one year since 2010. Afterwards, he returned to China and worked as an intensivist for three years. He currently works at St Michael’s Hospital as a research fellow supervised by Dr. Laurent Brochard, focusing on respiratory physiology and mechanical ventilation, predominantly in patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome.
Dr. Irene Telias is a MD specialist in Internal Medicine and Critical Care. She was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her research interests are respiratory effort in mechanically ventilated patients and its influence on ventilation induced lung injury and diaphragmatic dysfunction, as well as heart-lung interactions during liberation from mechanical ventilation.
Dr. Michael Sklar completed his Bachelor of Science in Physiology at McGill University and his Doctor of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan. He is currently completing his residency training in Anesthesia at the University of Toronto. His research interests are respiratory failure and mechanical ventilation.
Fahima is the administrative assistant to Dr. Laurent Brochard, the Director of the U of T Interdepartmental Division of Critical Care Medicine and Keenan Chair of Critical Care & Respiratory Medicine. She has a varied background in administration, with a little teaching along the way as well. She is overseeing all the administrative functions in the office.
Fahima attained her Bachelor of Arts Degree in English Literature from the National university of Bangladesh. She has completed the Medical office Administration course (Diploma) with honors. She is the friendly voice that will most likely greet you when you call Dr. Brochard’s office! She can be reached at 416-864-5686, or nasreenf@smh.ca
Physiotherapist specialized in respiratory care with over a decade of experience in Intensive Care Unit and Emergency Room. He holds a Master’s degree in Pulmonology Sciences from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. He also is a Biomedical Engineering Technologist graduated from Centennial College, Canada. Currently, a Ph.D. student at the University of Toronto, Institute of Medical Science, supervised by Dr. Laurent Brochard.
Dr. Luciana Rodriguez-Guerineau was trained in Argentina, Spain, U.K. and Canada. In 2019, she was appointed as a Staff Physician in the Cardiac Division of Critical Care Medicine at Sickkids and as an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Toronto. Dr. Rodriguez-Guerineau’s research interests include respiratory physiology and cardiopulmonary interactions in patients with congenital heart diseases.
Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Critical Care at St. Michael’s Hospital, Toronto, Canada. Research Fellow in Translational Medicine at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), Toronto, Canada. Doctoral Degree in Science at University of Sao Paulo (2019), Sao Paulo, Brazil. Specialist in Respiratory and Cardiovascular Physical Therapy at University of Sao Paulo (2012), Sao Paulo, Brazil. Bachelor’s Degree in Physical Therapy at State University of Piaui (2011), Teresina, Brazil. My primary area of interest has been the ventilator and ventilator management of acute respiratory failure
Antenor is a physiotherapist with strong expertise in outpatient pulmonary rehabilitation principles. Now, he is working at Dr. Brochard’s lab to explore the more acute state of the spectrum, knowing there is a continuum in terms of patients’ trajectory. He is involved in projects investigating respiratory muscle function and the influence of sleep disorders and sedation on clinical outcomes in patients with acute hypercapnic respiratory failure and under mechanical ventilation.
Dr. Annia Schreiber received her M.D. with honours from the University of Torino, Italy, where she went on to complete her post-graduate training in Respirology. Subsequently, she worked as a full-time staff physician at the Respiratory Intensive Care Unit and Pulmonary Rehabilitation Unit of the Maugeri Hospital in Pavia, Italy. In 2016 she undertook a research fellowship at the Département d’Anesthésie-Réanimation of the La Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, France, focused on lung and diaphragm ultrasound in the context of weaning from mechanical ventilation.
Currently, she is based in Toronto, where she first held a position as a research fellow in Critical Care Medicine and is now pursuing her PhD at the University of Toronto, under the supervision of Dr. Laurent Brochard. Her PhD is focused on exploring the role of the accessory muscles in patients with prolonged weaning from mechanical ventilation, including patients with spinal cord injury, and on developing novel rehabilitative techniques to train these muscles and promote liberation from the ventilator. During her PhD, she developed an innovative method to quantify abdominal muscle function using ultrasound, and a prediction score for weaning success after spinal cord injury. She has been a Winfocus certified instructor of lung ultrasound since 2015.
Vorakamol Phoophiboon, also known as Pink, is a research fellow of Dr. Brochard’s lab since 2021 and is also a successful clinical fellow in Adult Critical Care program at St. Michael’s hospital, University of Toronto. Dr. Phoophiboon has qualifications in European Diploma in Intensive Care Medicine (EDIC) in 2022 and Comprehensive Online Diploma in Neurotrauma Care from Global Neuro in 2023. Her educational background includes a bachelor’s degree in medicine, completion of internal medicine residency and pulmonology fellowship and a master’s degree in science from Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand. Dr. Phoophiboon has a particular focus on respiratory physiology and mechanical ventilation in her research. Her research interests include the regional distribution of ventilation and the application of electrical impedance tomography (EIT) in critically ill patients. She has been actively involved in several physiological studies such as ventilation distribution during spontaneous breathing trial (VISION), evaluation of patient’s ventilation distribution during spontaneous breathing (trial) (ENVISION) and ventilation distribution and effect of postural lateralization on traumatic lung injury (VICTORY). Notably, her research projects have received recognition and support from the PSI foundation, Ontario, Canada, through health research grants with an emphasis on research relevant to patient care.
Dr. Takeshi Yoshida is a graduate from Mie University School of Medicine (MD) in Japan. He completed his clinical training in Osaka and is board certified in Emergency Medicine and Critical Care Medicine – all in the rigorous Japanese system. His graduate research training (PhD) was completed in Osaka (Dr. Fujino) where he demonstrated the convincing laboratory evidence for lung injury resulting from spontaneous effort during mechanical ventilation. He furthered this during a year’s work with Dr. Amato (University of São Paulo) where he described ‘Pendelluft’, a new mechanism of effort-dependent lung injury and developed extensive knowledge on the mechanics of pleural pressures.
He is currently completing an additional 3-year post-doctoral fellowship in Toronto (Dr. Kavanagh/Dr. Brochard) exploring translational research on pleural pressure and its manipulation. Dr. Yoshida has been supported by a RestraComp award from the Hospital for Sick Children. He has won multiple hospital, university and international awards, most recently the ‘Global Rising Star’ award from the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society. He has published 46 papers.
Dr. Tài Pham completed his training in Anesthesia and Intensive Care in Paris. His qualifications include a Master of Public Health, and several University Degrees in the field of Critical Care: Infectious diseases in the ICU; Ultrasonic Techniques in Anesthesia and Intensive Care; Mechanical Ventilation. His main areas of interest comprise observational studies in the ICU, mechanical ventilation, ARDS and he is a member of the executive committee of the LUNG SAFE study recently published in the JAMA. He has worked in the Respiratory Team and the REVA network led by Dr. Brochard in Paris and is also involved in the ECMONet research network.
He is currently both a Research Fellow in Dr. Brochard’s laboratory and a Clinical Fellow in the Medical Surgical ICU of St. Michael’s Hospital. His main current project is the “INFOVENT” research program which aims at determining the epidemiology of patient-ventilator dyssynchronies in hypoxemic intubated patients and at developing strategies to minimize dyssynchronies and ultimately improve patients outcome.
Luis Felipe Damiani is a physiotherapist who graduated from Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso, Chile in 2010. He holds a Master’s Degree in epidemiology and is now completing his second year as a PhD student at Universidad Catolica de Chile. He holds several diplomas in evidence-based medicine and ventilatory therapy and has a keen research interest in sleep medicine, acute respiratory failure, mechanical ventilation and asynchronies.
My main areas of research interest are decision-making and evidence-based practice in critical care. I am currently conducting a multi-centre study of decision-making preferences and psychological outcomes in family members of critically ill patients funded by Sigma Theta Tau International (STTI). Our research group has recently commenced a program of research to better understand the relationship between homelessness and ICU utilization. I am also currently involved in the development of two national evidence based guidelines related to the prevention and management of ventilator associated pneumonia and the implementation of therapeutic hypothermia post-cardiac arrest.
Frank Bezerra is a Physiotherapist with a PhD from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He is an Associate Professor within the Department of Biological Sciences at Federal University of Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, Brazil. In 2013, he completed his first Post-Doctoral from the Laboratory of Respiration Physiology at Carlos Chagas Filho Biophysics Institute, supervised by Prof. Walter Zin. His research interests are surfactant, hyperoxia, oxidative stress, mechanical ventilation and ventilation induced lung injury.
Dr. Rémi Coudroy is an Associate Professor in the Medical Intensive Care Unit of Poitiers’ teaching Hospital (France). He completed his MD at the University of Poitiers with a specialty in Internal Medicine and Critical Care Medicine, and is currently PhD student in the INSERM CIC 1402 department at the University of Poitiers. He joined Dr. Brochard’s Research Lab in September 2018 as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow.
His research interest focuses on the noninvasive management of acute respiratory failure of immunocompromised patients. At St Michael’s Hospital, his main field of research are the physiologic effects of high-flow nasal cannula oxygen therapy, respiratory physiology and airway closure in ARDS.
Dr. Annemijn Jonkman holds an MSc. degree in Technical Medicine (combined medicine and engineering program, the Netherlands). Since 2017 she has been working a technical physician-scientist at the ICU of the Amsterdam UMC, focussing on technological innovations within the field of respiratory physiology and mechanical ventilation. She completed a research fellowship at Dr. Brochard’s lab in 2020 for which she was selected as a PLUG working group fellow. Her focus was an international study on lung recruitment assessed by EIT (RECRUIT study), and she was involved in several projects related to respiratory muscle physiology. In October 2021 she obtained a PhD degree at the Vrije University of Amsterdam on her research “Towards respiratory muscle-protective mechanical ventilation in the critically ill: technology to monitor and assist physiology” which also included various collaborations with Dr. Brochard’s lab. Since 2019, she has been a member of the mechanical ventilation masterclass faculty of the ESICM, and is an active member of the PLUG. In 2022, she continues her clinical and research career at the ICU of the Erasmus MC (Rotterdam, The Netherlands).
Dr. Giulia Cavalot completed her MD at the University of Torino and is a soon-to-be specialist in Internal Medicine at the “A.O.U. Città della Salute e della Scienza” hospital in Torino (Italy). She joined dr. Brochard’s Research laboratory in September 2018 for a one-year research period within her residency program.
Her research interest focuses on acute respiratory failure, non-invasive ventilation and ultrasound. At St. Michael’s Hospital she worked on a project that aims at reducing readmissions in COPD patients; she also participated in studies that explore the physiological effects of high-flow nasal cannula oxygen therapy, with a focus on respiratory muscles ultrasound.
Thomas is a Respiratory Therapist and the Clinical Specialist – Mechanical Ventilation for the Centre of Excellence in Mechanical Ventilation (CoEMV). He has been involved in a number of critical care research studies and has published research, editorials, and textbook chapters related to mechanical ventilation and patient monitoring.
Dr. Clément Brault completed his MD at the University of Amiens (France) with a specialty in Internal Medicine and Critical Care Medicine. His research interest focuses on acute respiratory distress syndrome and heart-lung interactions. He is currently involved in projects investigating lung recruitment and the airway closure phenomenon.
Dr. Cong Lu has worked as pediatric intensivist at Beijing Children’s Hospital in China for a decade. He did one-year research fellow since March 2017 in St. Michael’s Hospital supervised by Dr. Christer Sinderby, focused on applications of neurally adjusted ventilatory assist (NAVA) in mechanical ventilation. He started working with Dr. Laurent Brochard from September 2019, focused on clinical research on respiratory mechanics of ARDS patients. Cong got his Master of Medicine in 2009 and currently, he is a Ph.D. candidate at the Institute of Medical Science at University of Toronto, supervised by Dr. Haibo Zhang. His research is about the lung tissue bioengineering through lung organoids transplantation.
