Dr. Abella is the Clinical Research Director of the Center for Resuscitation Science, at the University of Pennsylvania, and an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine. He attended medical school at Johns Hopkins and then completed both internal medicine and emergency medicine residencies at the University of Chicago. Dr. Abella has authored over 100 scholarly works in numerous professional journals including JAMA and Circulation, and has authored review monographs and textbook chapters on cardiac arrest and resuscitation. He is the incoming chair of the AHA National 3CPR Council and has participated in developing international CPR guidelines. He has won a number of honors for his research, clinical care in the Emergency Department and his teaching of residents and medical students, and has lectured widely on the topics of cardiac arrest and post-arrest hypothermia treatment. The investigative work of Dr. Abella’s team is supported by funding from the NIH, AHA and Medtronic Foundation, as well as industry sources.
Dr Baker and his team at the Cara Phelan Centre for Trauma Research are internationally recognized for their research into the relationship between trauma and inflammation – work that is essential to developing therapies that will enable brain-injured patients recover more fully and have a higher quality of life. His major research interests include quality of care in critical care and blood and blood substitute resuscitation of brain injury. Dr Baker holds several directorships at St Michael’s Hospital. Dr Baker is a member of the Core Committee of the Collaborative Program in Resuscitation Sciences (CPRS) and on the planning committee for Resuscitatation in Motion 2012.
Peter Brindley is first and foremost, a full-time Critical Care Physician. His clinical duties involve both General Systems Intensive Care and Neuro Sciences Intensive Care. Academically, Peter is a Professor in Critical Care and an Adjunct Professor in Ethics. His publications centre on resuscitation; its education and its ethics. These include prognostication; the use of simulation, and the importance of crisis management and human factors. Peter is a founding member of the Canadian Resuscitation Institute, its current vice-chair, and a current advisor to several national and international education groups. He is a former Medical Lead for Simulation; a former Education Lead for his University School, and a former Program Director. Peter’s greatest achievements are two little kids, in whom he delights. These wise critics care little about what titles he may or may not hold.
St Michael’s Hospital, University of Toronto Dr. Laurent Brochard is the Interdepartmental Division Head of Critical Care Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto. He is a Full Professor in Critical Care Medicine University of Toronto, Keenan Chair, Critical Care and Respiratory Medicine and a Clinician Scientist, Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, Keenan Research Centre for Biomedical Science, Department of Critical Care at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.
He obtained his MD degree from University Paris V in 1986 followed by residency training in Hopitaux de Paris. He did his research fellowship at the National Institute for Scientific and Medical Research (INSERM) (Creteil). He was appointed Vice Dean of the Medical School of Creteil, Paris 12 University in 1995 to 2003. He was the head of the Medical Council, Henri Mondor Hospital Medical ICU in Creteil, France from 2003 – 2010. He was the Head of the Intensive Care Unit of the Geneva University Hospital, in Switzerland for three years (2010-2013). He has been Editor-in-Chief of the journal Intensive Care Medicine in 2001 – 2007 and is currently Deputy Editor of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. He has a strong involvement in research, and especially clinical research about mechanical ventilation.
He has been at the head of a clinical research network on mechanical ventilation in Europe (REVA). He mentored and directed more than 15 PhD students. He published over 300 publications.
Brian Cuthbertson is Chief of the Department of Critical Care Medicine at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and Professor in the Interdepartmental Division of Critical Care Medicine at the University of Toronto. He is also an Honorary Professor of Critical Care Medicine at the University of Aberdeen. His research interests include improving outcomes from critical illness and major surgery. He has over 100 peer-reviewed publications and $10million of research grants as well as playing a leading role in a number of key clinical guidelines.
Dr. Brooks is Associate Professor (Clinician-Scientist) and Emergency Physician in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Queen’s University. He is also a Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute Scientist at St. Michael’s in Toronto. Dr. Brooks conducts research in the areas of cardiac arrest and resuscitation. Specifically, his research is focused around methods of improving bystander resuscitation for victims of out of hospital cardiac arrest and the quality of care for patients admitted to hospital after cardiac arrest. He represents the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada as a member of the Advanced Cardiac Life Support Taskforce of the International Liaison Committee for Resuscitation and is a member of the Emergency Cardiovascular Care Science Subcomittee of the American Heart Association. He lives in Kingston with his wife Marie and sons Nathan, Malcolm and Bradley.
Douglas Campbell graduated in medicine from the University of Calgary in 1997 and completed his residency at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto in 2001. In 2003, he completed a neonatal fellowship at the University of Toronto. He joined St. Michael’s Hospital in 2003 where he is currently the director of the neonatal intensive care unit and deputy chief pediatrics. He is also an assistant professor, department of pediatrics at the University of Toronto.
Dr. Campbell received simulation training at Stanford University and is a simulation lead at the University of Toronto’s division of neonatal-perinatal medicine. He is a member of the Canadian Pediatric Society National Resuscitation Program executive committee and research committee.In 2012, Dr. Campbell was awarded the Marvin Gerstein Award chosen by the pediatric residents of the University of Toronto for outstanding teaching.
Dr Chan holds a PhD in Operations Research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at U of T in 2009. His primary research interests are in optimization under uncertainty and the application of optimization methods in areas such as radiation therapy, health care operations and sustainability. Before coming to Toronto he was an Associate in the Chicago office of McKinsey and Co., a global management consulting firm, where he advised leading companies in the fields of medical devices, among other things.He currently holds the Canada Research Chair in Novel Optimization and Analytics in Health.
Fred Chapman is the Director of Research for Physio-Control, the company that makes LIFEPAKs. In that role, he leads a group of engineers and scientists that focus on emergency medical care. Before moving to the Seattle area, Fred earned a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering working with a group from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, NY) on ventilation and trauma research. His research interests nowadays include various topics closely tied to emergency care, such as transthoracic defibrillation, physiological monitoring, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, mechanical ventilation, and detecting and improving care for acute myocardial infarctions. He is widely published and enjoys extensive collaboration with a number of thought leaders in increasing our understanding of resuscitation and management of acute illnesses. In his spare time, Fred is an avid skier, bicyclist, and hiker, and enjoys exploring the mountains of the Pacific Northwest with his wife and son.
Dr. Jim Christenson is an emergency physician at St. Paul’s Hospital and was appointed as Professor and Head of the Academic Department of Emergency Medicine at UBC in September 2010. He is keenly interested in developing a well connected community of emergency physicians across the province and in galvanizing the faculty in the Department to support and facilitate the best care possible in the 95 hospital emergency departments in British Columbia. Dr. Christenson’s primary research interest is in resuscitation. He is the Principal Investigator for the BC Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium and has been involved in various aspects of cardiac arrest and trauma research for 25 years. Dr. Christenson is committed to further increases in survival through improvements in the pre-hospital resuscitation and post-resuscitation phases of care across BC. He is a founding member of the new Canadian Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium (CanROC).
Dr Sheldon Cheskes is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine, Division of Emergency Medicine at the University Of Toronto having graduated in 1984. He is currently the Medical Director for the Sunnybrook Centre for Pre Hospital Medicine for the Regions of Peel and Halton. He was formerly the Deputy Chief, Emergency Medicine, Peel Memorial Hospital, Brampton Ontario from 1989-2006. He is was the co-Principal Investigator for the Toronto Site of the Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium and is a Scientist at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, St. Michaels Hospital, University of Toronto. His research areas of interest are cardiac arrest resuscitation and prehospital systems of STEMI care. He is a Co-Investigator in the new Canadian Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium (CanROC).
Dr. de Caen is a Pediatric Intensive Care Consultant and Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the Stollery Children’s Hospital/ University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. His research/ clinical interests include Resuscitation Medicine and Critical Care Transport Medicine. He has held leadership positions within ILCOR (the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation) since 2003, and since 2005 has been ILCOR’s Pediatric Task Force Co-chair, helping lead its systematic review process of the Pediatric Resuscitation literature. He has been part of the knowledge translation process into the “PALS” resuscitation guidelines for Heart and Stroke Canada and the American Heart Association (AHA) since 2003, and has been the writing group chair for AHA’s most recent PALS guidelines (published October, 2015). He is the current chair of CanROC’s Pediatric subcommittee.
Dr Dos Santos’ major research interest is acute lung injury. This can be caused by either biomolecular or biophysical insults to the lungs, such as an infection or the mechanical injury resulting from mechanical ventilation itself. Her lab at Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute at St Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, is dedicated to understanding the interaction between patients and the breathing machine and finding new ways to identify individuals, who are at higher risk for developing lung injury, diagnose, treat and monitor improvement from injury. To accomplish these goals, she and her team have developed various model systems from basic epithelial cell stretch models to animal models of lung injury. They exploit whole genome approaches, such as microarray technology, to identify novel molecular targets and use various computational strategies to analyze our data. They are also interested in understanding how and why critically ill patients develop multi-organ failure. To answer some of the more complex questions the lab also collaborates actively with clinical researchers involved in state of the art clinical trials related to novel mechanical ventilation strategies.
Professor Judith Finn is the Director of the Prehospital, Resuscitation and Emergency Care Research Unit (PRECRU) in the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Paramedicine at Curtin University (Perth, Australia) and Director of the Australian Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium (Aus-ROC) – a NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence, administratively based in the School of Public Health & Preventive Medicine at Monash University (Melbourne, Australia). Judith also holds an adjunct appointment as Research Professor with St John Ambulance Western Australia; and leads a successful program of prehospital research.
Judith has a clinical background as a critical care registered nurse and worked as a nurse academic for over a decade before completing a PhD in clinical epidemiology in 2002. Judith was the Co-chair of the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation (ILCOR) “Education, Implementation and Teams” Taskforce for the C2015 review of resuscitation science and treatment recommendations.
Dr. Fries is the head of the anesthesia and critical care department at St. Vincenz Hospital in Limburg. He spent a one year post-doc fellowship at the prestigious Institute of Critical Care Medicine in Palm Springs, CA under the supervision of the late giant in critical care, Max Harry Weil. His main research interest over the last decade mainly focused on the field of neuroprotective strategies using medical gases and especially noble gases. His work has been highly sponsored by national and international foundations and he has served as member of various committees both in Germany (DGAI) and also on a European (ESA) level.
Anne-Marie Guerguerian is a paediatric intensive care physician in the Department of Critical Care Medicine at the Hospital for Sick Children. At the University of Toronto, she is appointed to the Department of Paediatrics, to the Institute of Medical Sciences of the School of Graduate Studies, and to the Interdepartmental Division of Critical Care. As a Clinician, she is Medical Director of Extracorporeal Life Support Program and as a Senior Scientist in of the Research Institute, her program of research is focused on developing methods to quantify brain injury during critical illness and on undertaking trials to test the means to minimize injury. As a Clinician Scientist, she volunteers for the pediatric research resuscitation task forces of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation, and for the Get With The Guidelines’ American Heart Association.
Uli Herken is Senior Director of Clinical and Scientific Affairs at ZOLL Medical. He manages a team of scientists and clinical affairs professionals conducting pre-clinical and clinical research in resuscitation and emergency medical care. He strongly believes that we already have many tools at hand to improve survival after cardiac arrest and that proper implementation of these tools is the key to success. Prior to joining ZOLL, he was responsible for research in several small start-up companies in the field of diagnostic and therapeutic ultrasound. Uli received his medical degree and PhD at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, and began his career as a staff physician at Rudolf-Virchow Hospital, Berlin (now part of Charité), where he worked in internal medicine, intensive care and on a physician-manned ambulance.
Dr. Jüni is the Director of the Applied Health Research Centre (AHRC) at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael’s Hospital and a Professor at the Department of Medicine of the University of Toronto. He is a graduate of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Bern in Switzerland. Dr. Jüni completed his training in internal medicine at various hospitals in Switzerland, and was a Research Fellow at the Department of Social Medicine at the University of Bristol, UK. Prior to joining St. Michael’s Hospital, he was the Director of the Institute of Primary Health Care and Professor of Primary Care and Clinical Epidemiology at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Bern in Switzerland. He held previous appointments as Director of the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine and Founding Director of CTU Bern, the University of Bern’s clinical trials unit.
As an internationally renowned clinical epidemiologist and methodologist, Dr. Jüni is known for his methodological work and for his clinical research on the diagnosis and management of cardiovascular and musculoskeletal disorders. A Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology, he has had leading roles in several major cardiovascular trials, including SIRTAX, LEADERS, FAME 2 and MATRIX. He has served as a member of several task forces of the European Society of Cardiology and has co-authored the European guidelines on myocardial revascularization and on the management of acute myocardial infarction. Dr. Jüni has published over 250 papers, many of these widely cited. In 2015 he was recognized as Highly Cited Researcher by Thomson Reuters in view of several papers published in the last decade that ranked among the top 1% most cited in their field.
Dr. Wolfgang Kuebler is a lung and cardiovascular physiologist and the Scientific Director of the Critical Illness and Injury Research Centre at the Keenan Research Centre for Biomedical Science of St. Michael’s Hospital. He is a professor at the University of Toronto in both the Department of Surgery and the Department of Physiology, a Professor of Physiology at the Charité-Universitaetsmedizin Berlin with an endowed professorship by the German Heart Institute Berlin, an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Ryerson University, and an Adjunct Professor in the College of Graduate Studies and Research at the University of Saskatchewan. His research interest focuses on translational research in pulmonary and microvascular physiology and pathophysiology, he has published > 120 peer-reviewed articles largely on topics that integrate basic research on intracellular signalling and intercellular communication pathways to the level of the intact organ and organism in complex disease models such as acute lung injury, lung edema, or pulmonary hypertension.
John Laffey is Professor in the Departments of Anaesthesia and Physiology, University of Toronto, Associate Scientist in the Keenan Research Centre for Biomedical Science of St Michael’s Hospital and Anesthetist in Chief at SMH. His major laboratory research interests are centred on investigation of the pathophysiology of, and development of therapeutic strategies for Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS), a devastating disease which causes severe respiratory failure in critically ill patients, and for which there are currently no specific therapies. A major research theme is the therapeutic potential of cell and gene based therapies for ARDS. A second major interest is the study of the effects and mechanisms of action of hypercapnia and acidosis in the setting of Critical Illness. He has clinical research interests in the fields of Anesthesia and Critical Care Medicine. Specific interests include investigation of novel approaches to postoperative analgesia, and the evaluation of novel airway devices. Dr Laffey is on the executive of the recently established Critical Illness and Injury Research Centre at St Michael’s Hospital.
John Marshall is a Professor of Surgery at the University of Toronto, and a trauma surgeon and intensivist at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, Canada. His academic interests are sepsis, trauma, and the innate immune response. His laboratory studies the cellular mechanisms that prolong neutrophil survival in critical illness by preventing neutrophil programmed cell death, or apoptosis. Professor Marshall has an active clinical research interest in sepsis and ICU-acquired infection, and in the design of clinical trials and outcome measures. He has published more than 260 manuscripts, and 70 book chapters, and is the editor of 2 books. He is the founding chair of the International Forum of Acute Care Trialists (InFACT) – a global network of investigator-led critical care clinical research groups, and a member of the Council of the World Federation of Societies of Intensive and Critical Care Medicine and of the executive committee of the International Severe Acute Respiratory Infections Consortium. He is past-chair of the International Sepsis Forum, past-President of the Surgical Infection Society, and past-chair of the Canadian Critical Care Trials Group. He has given invited lectures at more than 400 meetings around the world, and is a member of the editorial boards of seven journals.
Bryan McNally is an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia. He graduated from Cornell University with an undergraduate degree in Meteorology. He began his formal medical education working as an Emergency Medical Technician and Paramedic in the Harlem and Washington Heights communities for the New York City Emergency Medical Service. He graduated from the Albany Medical College in upstate New York and completed his specialty training in emergency medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York after completing an internship at Boston City Hospital. He subsequently completed a two-year prehospital and disaster/emergency medical services fellowship at Boston Emergency Medical Service. His Master’s of Public Health degree is in Health Service Administration from Boston University. He is board certified by the American Board of Emergency Medicine. His areas of expertise are emergency medicine and prehospital and disaster medicine. Dr. McNally is the Executive Director of the CARES (Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival) Program that was founded by the US CDC in 2004. He serves as a consultant for the Pan Asian Resuscitation Outcomes Study (PAROS) and in 2013 became a Visiting Professor of Emergency Medicine at Duke-National University of Singapore.
James J. Menegazzi, PhD, is a Professor of Emergency Medicine with tenure and Department of Emergency Medicine Endowed Professor of Resuscitation Research. He holds secondary appointments in the University’s Department of Bioengineering and the Clinical and Translational Science Institute. He is also an Associate Scientist at the Safar Center for Resuscitation Research. The focus of Dr Menegazzi’s work is resuscitation of cardiac arrest. He has done pioneering work analyzing the ECG waveform during ventricular fibrillation, demonstrating that quantitative waveform measures can be used to guide therapy. He has investigated novel approaches to treating prolonged cardiac arrest such as the use of drug cocktails, and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) cardiac life support (ECLS). He developed the two-thumb with thoracic squeeze method of infant chest compression that is currently recommended by the American Heart Association. Dr. Menegazzi is presently conducting research on the phenomenon of rearrest in patients who attain return of spontaneous circulation during out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. His work is funded primarily by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Dr Menegazzi is the editor in chief of the journal PreHopsital Emergency Care.
Raina Merchant is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and has a secondary appointment in the Department of Internal Medicine and Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care. She is a Co-Director of the RWJF Clinical Scholars Program at the University of Pennsylvania and the Director of the Penn Social Media and Health Innovation Lab (http://socialmedialab.upenn.edu/). Her research interest is in diffusion of innovation, social media, public health, and resuscitation science. Her work involves development and testing of health related mobile apps and she has conducted several projects evaluating health communication on social/mobile media sites like Facebook, Yelp, Foursquare, Gigwalk, and others. She additionally runs a Twitter lab which analyzes tweets related to resuscitation, critical care, and public health/policy. Much of her work bridges new technologies in the field of cardiovascular health. In this context, she is the Director of the MyHeartMap Challenge, (http://www.med.upenn.edu/myheartmap/) a social media and crowdsourcing project aimed at improving AED access and awareness by engaging the public to serve as citizen scientist. Dr. Merchant was recently recognized by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as one of 10 young investigators likely to have a significant impact on the future of health and healthcare in the US.
Laurie Morrison is the Robert & Dorothy Pitts Research Chair in Acute Care & Emergency Medicine, Professor and Clinician Scientist in the Division of Emergency Medicine, Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto and Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute at St Michael’s Hospital. She is the Director of Rescu, a resuscitation research program focusing on the evaluation and implementation of prehospital and transport medicine time sensitive interventions in acute emergencies (www.rescu.ca). She conducts systematic reviews and meta-analyses in topics pertaining to Acute Coronary Syndrome and Resuscitation and has established a collaborative network to conduct randomized controlled trials and outcome validation studies in prehospital resuscitation research. She is a US National Institute of Health, Canadian Institute of Health Research and Heart and Stroke Canada funded investigator within the Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium. She is a past Chair and current member of the Advanced Cardiac Life Support committee of the American Heart Association and on the Editorial Board of the 2010 guidelines in Resuscitation as the Co-Chair of the International Liaison Committee of Resuscitation Advance Life Support Taskforce in 2010. She is the past chair of the Research and Policy Planning Advisory Committee for Heart and Stroke Canada. She has received the Canadian Medical Association award in mentorship; the May Cohen Award and the U of T Department of Medicine Bob Hyland Award. Dr Morrison is a founding member of the new Canadian Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium (CanROC).
Vinay Nadkarni is Endowed Chair of Critical Care Medicine, Director of the Center for Simulation, Advanced Education and Innovation, and Associate Director of the Center for Resuscitation Science at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. He is an internationally recognized physician-scientist with a lifetime commitment to the discovery, translation and implementation of shock, trauma and resuscitation science, authoring more than 250 peer-reviewed manuscripts 30 book chapters, and >100 keynote lectures around the world. He has trained, mentored and advised over 100 young physician-scientists, and received awards including the Society of Critical Care Medicine Asmund Laerdal Award for Lifetime Achievement, R-Baby Foundation National Pioneer Award, American Academy of Pediatrics Distinguished Career Award, and the American Heart Association’s Ron Haddock International Impact Award.
Dr. Robert Neumar is Professor and Chair of Emergency Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. He is the immediate past Chair of the American Heart Association Emergency Cardiovascular Care Committee. He has over 20 years research experience in cardiac arrest resuscitation, with international recognition as an expert in advanced cardiovascular life support (ACLS) and the pathophysiology and treatment of post-cardiac arrest syndrome. His research has focused on mechanisms of brain injury caused by cardiac arrest and the neuroprotective strategies including hypothermic-targeted temperature management.
Robert Niskanen has been active in biomedical engineering for more than 30 years with primary professional interests centering on resuscitation, emergency medicine and cardiovascular disease. Through Resurgent Biomedical, Bob consults for several medical device companies – all related to improving survival from sudden cardiac arrest. Prior to starting Resurgent Biomedical Consulting, Bob was a Senior Principal Scientist at Physio-Control in Redmond, Washington for more than 25 years. As the Director of Research and then VP of Clinical Research, he was involved in both technical and clinical research in CPR, defibrillation, ventilation, acute myocardial infarction triage, and medical data management. Bob is also Cofounder and Past Chairman of the Board at Take Heart America, pioneering the systems-based approach to improving survival from sudden cardiac arrest. He delights in working with engineers, scientists, physicians, researchers, business professionals, and others to solve problems in emergency medicine. He is convinced that dramatic improvements can and will be made in the survival rate of sudden cardiac arrest through collaboration. Bob earned his MSEE at the University of Washington in 1976. He and his wife Judy live in the beautiful Pacific Northwest where they enjoy their five young grandchildren and three grown kids either at home, on the river, or at the cabin.
At U of T Nursing, Dr. Monica Parry is the Director of the Nurse Practitioner Programs. In response to student demand for a practice-focused global health graduate program, Dr. Parry assisted in developing the innovative Primary Health Care – Global Health area of emphasis in the NP program.
Her program of research includes supportive care measures to improve the health outcomes for individuals with chronic disease. Dr. Parry is researching the use of impedance cardiography to improve health outcomes in individuals with heart failure. She has investigated the use of peer support and advanced practice nursing interventions to improve health-related quality of life, function, pain and depressive symptoms in men and women with cardiovascular disease. As well, she is developing a model of care using peer support strategies to prevent type 2 diabetes.
Dr. Parry is an investigator with the Toronto Health Economics and Technology Assessment (THETA) Collaborative, a multidisciplinary research collaboration based at U of T. Dr. Parry continues to practise as a nurse practitioner in cardiac surgery at a tertiary care hospital in southeastern Ontario.
Dr Parsons obtained her PhD in Medical Science from the University of Toronto. She is a Scientist in the Keenan Research Centre of the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute and a Staff Research Scientist in the Applied Health Research Centre at St Michael’s Hospital. Dr Parson’s research is focused on applying qualitative methodologies to a variety of health care issues and her interests range from knowledge translation and health services research, to narrative and film-based methods and social determinants of health.
Dr. Rizoli received his M.D. and completed a General Surgery residency in Brazil. Following Medical School and residency, he moved to Canada in 1992 where he underwent a second residency in General Surgery, fellowships in Trauma and Critical Care and a PhD under Dr. Ori Rotstein, St. Michael’s Surgeon-in-Chief. Dr. Rizoli was also appointed as the first St. Michael’s Hospital-University of Toronto Endowed Chair in Trauma Research beginning in July 2013. The five-year chair will support Dr. Rizoli’s research and innovation in trauma care. As a national leader in trauma resuscitation research, he plans to use the chair’s support to continue his work in developing new, more effective approaches to stopping life-threatening bleeding and ensuring that blood products are used appropriately in acute trauma patients. As the director of trauma at St. Michael’s Hospital, Dr. Rizoli is uniquely positioned to apply his research discoveries to improve outcomes for trauma patients. St. Michael’s is one of 11 Ontario hospitals designated by the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care as a Level 1 trauma center, equipped to receive the most severely injured patients. He is a Co-Investigator in the new Canadian Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium (CanROC)
Ori Rotstein is Professor of Surgery and Associate Chair of the Department of Surgery, University of Toronto. He has been Surgeon-in-Chief at St. Michael’s Hospital and Medical Director of Oncology Services at St. Michael’s Hospital since 2004. In 2010 he became the Associate Director, Basic Science Research, Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, St. Michael’s Hospital, and an Adjunct Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ryerson University. He is the former Director of the Institute of Medical Science, University of Toronto, a graduate unit of the School of Graduate Studies. In August 2011 he was honoured by the IMS with the Ori Rotstein Lectureship in Translational Research. Dr Rotstein is a widely acknowledged expert in the management of Intra-abdominal infection and inflammation. He continues his basic research work in the area of cellular activation during shock resuscitation and has evaluated several novel approaches to preventing injury, including the use of Redox manipulating drugs, as well as hypertonic solutions.
Dr Scales graduated from the University of Toronto (UofT) in 1997. Following residencies in Internal Medicine (2001) and Critical Care Medicine (2003) in Toronto, he completed a PhD in Clinical Epidemiology and Health Care Research (UofT) in 2007. He is now an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto, Staff Intensivist at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Scientist at the Sunnybrook Research Institute, and an Adjunct Scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences. He is also the Program Director of the University of Toronto Adult Critical Care Medicine Residency program. Dr Scales is also the physician lead of the ‘ICU Clinical Best Practices Demonstration Project’ (Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-term Care, Critical Care Strategy). This cluster randomized trial aims to improve patient safety and quality of care across a network of 16 ICUs. Dr Scales is now conducting (as PI) a stepped-wedge cluster RCT to improve the application of evidence-based neuroprognostication for cardiac arrest survivors (PremaTOR; funded by HSF) and also an individual patient RCT (as PI) of pre-hospital cooling by paramedics of cardiac arrest victims (ICE-PACS, funded by CIHR). He is a Co-Investigator in the new Canadian Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium (CanROC).
Annemarie Silver, PhD is a Principal Scientist at ZOLL Medical Corporation. Dr. Silver earned a master’s degree in Kinesiology and Applied Physiology as well as a doctorate in Integrative Physiology from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Dr. Silver worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Boston University and as a professor at Assumption College prior to joining ZOLL. Dr. Silver collaborates with investigators throughout North American on cardiac arrest and trauma clinical research studies and is also involved in product development at ZOLL.
Dr. Verbeek is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto. He is also a medical director at the Sunnybrook-Osler Centre for Prehospital Care where he provides oversight for the Toronto EMS Paramedic Program, the largest municipally based EMS service in Canada comprised of over 1000 paramedics. Dr. Verbeek is a longstanding active member of the Prehospital Medical Advisory Committee which is responsible for advising government on standards for paramedic care in Ontario. He has an academic interest in prehospital resuscitation and end-of-life care and has published widely in this field from the perspective of clinical care, program evaluation, and policy development.
A graduate of the University of Athens Medical School in Greece, Dr. Yannopoulos completed his residency and cardiology fellowship at the University of Minnesota, then went on to finish his Interventional Cardiology fellowship at the Johns Hopkins University. He joined the University of Minnesota faculty in 2008.
Dr. Yannopoulos is an Interventional Cardiologist at the University of Minnesota Medical Center (UMMC) with board certifications in Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Medicine and Interventional Cardiology. He recently received the Robert Eddy Endowed Chair for Resuscitation Medicine and was appointed last year as Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Minnesota.
Dr. Yannopoulos has conducted studies in the areas of cardiopulmonary resuscitation, hypovolemic shock and hypothermia and has investigated in depth cardiopulmonary and thoracic-cranial interactions focusing on optimization of blood flow and vital organ outcomes.
