Team Members
Canada:
Québec
Anick Bérard
Researcher Anick Bérard was trained in epidemiology and genetics at McGill University, Harvard Medical School and Stanford University. She is a Full Professor of Perinatal Epidemiology at the Université de Montréal for the Faculty of Pharmacy and at CHU Ste-Justine in Montréal, and an Associate Professor with the Faculty of Medicine at Université Claude Bernard in Lyon, France. Anick Bérard holds a Canada Research Chair on Medications and Pregnancy Tier 1 and the UdeM Louis-Boivin Family Pharmaceutical Chair on “Medications, Pregnancy and Lactation”.
Anick Bérard is also Director of the Research Unit on Medications and Pregnancy at CHU Ste-Justine; Director of the Réseau québécois de recherche sur les médicaments of FRQS; a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences; a Fellow of the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology; and a voting member of the Teratology Society. Anick Bérard is the Principal Investigator of the studies of i) the Canadian Mother-Child Cohort (CAMCCO) Active Surveillance Initiative, ii) the Canadian Mother-Child Collaborative Training Platform (CAMCCO-L); iii) the cross-Canada CONCEPTION Study – COVID-19 and Pregnancy, iv) the Quebec Pregnancy/Children Cohort, v) the AMerican PREGNANcy/Child CohorT (AM-PREGNANT), and v) the French National Pregnancy Cohort, PregMed-France.
The researcher Anick Bérard has published over 600 scientific articles, abstracts and patents, and has obtained over $33 million in funding from the CIHR, CFI and FRQS as Principal Investigator. She recently received the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Society for Birth Defects Prevention and Research for her work on antidepressants, maternal depression and pregnancy; she also recently received a Career Research Award from the Association of Faculties of Pharmacy of Canada.
Sasha Bernatsky
Dr. Sasha Bernatsky is a rheumatologist, epidemiologist, and a James McGill Professor of Medicine at McGill University in the divisions of rheumatology and clinical epidemiology. She is a member of the Centre for Health Outcomes Research (CORE) at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre and a senior scientist affiliated with the Infectious Diseases and Immunity in Global Health Program. Dr. Bernatsky is the nominated PI of the CAN-AIM team (CAnadian Network for Advanced Interdisciplinary Methods for comparative effectiveness research), a pan-Canadian research network funded by the Drug Safety and Effectiveness Network (DSEN), a collaboration between CIHR and Health Canada. CAN-AIM team’s mandate is to provide new, accurate data on long-term, real-world outcomes of drug therapies. Her work on drug safety and effectiveness includes a recent national project to establish a registry of patients exposed to biosimilar agents and their legacy drugs. Dr. Bernatsky is also a mentor within the CIHR Drug Safety and Effectiveness Cross-Disciplinary Training (DSECT) Program, which provides a training environment for future scientists in Canada regarding high-quality post-market research in drug safety and effectiveness.
Évelyne Vinet
Dr. Vinet’s research has focused on reproductive issues in women with rheumatic diseases, with the goal of improving reproductive outcomes in women with rheumatic disease and their offspring.
She has created the world’s largest cohort of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) offspring, leading to novel findings on the increased risk of autism spectrum disorders, congenital heart defects, and stillbirths in SLE offspring. Using various administrative database sources, she has also evaluated other outcomes in SLE and rheumatoid arthritis. Currently, Dr. Vinet is establishing an international cohort of SLE pregnancies, conducting a randomized controlled trial to improve preeclampsia knowledge and aspirin adherence in pregnant SLE women, and performing a focus group study assessing pregnancy counselling in RA and SLE women.
Anaïs Lacasse
Dr. Anaïs Lacasse holds a PhD in Pharmacoepidemiology and is an associate professor in the Health Sciences Department at the University of Québec in Abitibi-Témiscamingue (UQAT) since 2009. In 2020, Anaïs Lacasse obtained a Junior 2 research scholarship from the FRQS in partnership with the Quebec SUPPORT Unit (Support for People and Patient-Oriented Research and Trials). She leads the Chronic Pain Epidemiology Research Laboratory which is funded by the Fondation of the University of Quebec in Abitibi-Témiscamingue (FUQAT), in partnership with local businesses: the Pharmacie Jean-Coutu de Rouyn-Noranda (community pharmacy) and Glencore Fonderie Horne (copper smelter). As co-director of the Québec Pain Research Network (RQRD), her research program aims at better understanding the treatment of chronic pain in the real-world clinical context.
Jessica Gorgui
Jessica Gorgui holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Sciences and a Master’s degree in Clinical Pharmacology from the University of Montréal. She is currently completing her PhD in pharmacoepidemiology under the supervision of Dr. Bérard. While finalizing her thesis, she is also Dr. Bérard’s pharmacoepidemiologist at CHU Sainte-Justine Research Center and the lead coordinator of the CONCEPTION Study among other projects. Jessica is also a lecturer at the University of Montreal, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels where she teaches epidemiology methods, perinatal pharmacoepidemiology and pharmacovigilance.
Sylvana Côté
Sylvana Côté is a full professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Montreal, a Researcher at CHU Sainte-Justine’s Hospital and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She heads the Observatory for Children’s Education and Health (http://observatoireenfants.ca/) and the Research Group on Children’s psychosocial Maladjustment (GRIP: https://grip-info.ca/). She studies life trajectories, beginning in utero, leading to psychosocial and school adjustment in children and adolescents. She adopts a life-span perspective to study the associations between early family adversity (e.g. socioeconomic disadvantaged, parental mental health problems) and poor child outcomes, and to test the efficacy of population-based prevention programs. Her work focusses on the prevention of 3 overlapping problems: psychosocial maladjustment, mental health problems, and academic difficulties. She has documented the conditions under which early child care and education can foster children’s healthy development and reduce social disparities; and identified programs to improve the quality of child care services offered to disadvantaged populations. Her research was published in over 200 peer reviewed papers and her H index is 50 (9877 citations). She has trained more than 50 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. She has received national and international awards and honors including senior fellowship from the Quebec Research Fund, Research Chairs in the Netherlands (Utretch University) and France (Idex Chair University of Bordeaux), and a Marie Curie International Fellowship. She has won the ACFAS award for the Quebec France cooperation and was named by Le Devoir newspaper among those who will make the year 2021.
Suzanne King
Dr. Suzanne King is Professor of Psychiatry at McGill University as well as a principle investigator at the McGill-affiliated Douglas Mental Health University Institute. After graduate training in psychology and educational research in Virginia, she conducted post-doctoral research at the Douglas, studying the family dynamics of people with schizophrenia. Her results led to the study of risk factors for mental illness, and of prenatal maternal stress in the development of psychopathology. Currently, her work is focused on three prospective longitudinal studies of children who were exposed to maternal stress in utero as the result of a natural disaster : The Quebec ice storm of 1998 ; Iowa floods of 2008 ; and Queensland floods in Australia in 2011.
Vanina Tchuente
Vanina Tchuente holds a Bachelor’s degree in Health Sciences from the University of Ottawa and a Master’s degree in Epidemiology from Laval University. She worked as research assistant at McGill, where she developed skills in analyzing data from administrative databases. She joined Dr. Berard’s team as Biostatistician/Epidemiologist at CHU Sainte-Justine Research Center in July 2019.
She is the biostatistician on the CONCEPTION Study.
Isabelle Boucoiran
Dr. Isabelle Boucoiran is Clinical Associate Professor at University of Montreal. She graduated at the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis (France) in 2010. After a maternal-fetal medicine fellowship at UdeM and a fellowship in reproductive infectious diseases at the University of British Columbia, she joined the Public Health School of UdeM and the obstetrics and gynecology department of the CHU Sainte-Justine where she is co-director of the Women and children Infectious Disease Centre, a provincial referral centre for congenital infections. She is a member of the SOGC infectious diseases committee. Her main research interests are infectious diseases in obstetrics-gynecology and maternal-fetal medicine.
Anne Monique Nuyt
Dr. Anne Monique Nuyt is a full professor in the Department of Pediatrics at University of Montreal. She received her medical degree and pediatric residency training at the Université de Sherbrooke, and her subspecialty in Neonatal-Perinatal medicine from McGill University. She pursued a research fellowship at the University of Iowa where she focused on perinatal cardiovascular physiology. She continued investigating cardiovascular science, supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, at the Collège de France. In 1998, she joined the CHU Sainte-Justine Research Center where she is currently senior clinician-scientist. Her research is supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. She studies mechanisms of developmental programming of hypertension and cardiovascular dysfunction in children and adults who were born very preterm. She is an active board member of scientific societies (Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD), International Society for Hypertension) and a member of grant peer-review committees (CIHR, HSF, FRQS). She has been awarded numerous prizes for her work.
Caroline Thanh Quach
Dr. Caroline Quach is a Professor in the Departments of Microbiology, Infectious Diseases & Immunology and of Pediatrics at University of Montreal. She is an adjunct Professor in the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health at McGill University and a scientific collaborator at the School of Public Health at Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) in Brussels. She is the physician in charge of Infection Prevention and control at CHU Sainte-Justine where she also works as a pediatric infectious diseases specialist and medical microbiologist. Dr. Quach is a clinician-scientist, who was supported by the Fonds de Recherche Québec – Santé (FRQS, chercheure boursière de mérite) and is now the Canada Research Chair, Tier 1 in Infection Prevention and Control. Her research interests are in Infection Prevention: both healthcare associated and vaccine preventable diseases. Dr. Quach is the former Chair of the National Advisory Committee on Immunization from the Public Health Agency of Canada (2017 2021). She is a former president from the Association for Medical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (AMMI) Canada (2014 2016). She was named Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. Dr. Quach was selected as one of the 2019 most Powerful Women in Canada (2019 Top 100 Award Winner in the Manulife Science and Technology category). In May 2021, she received the Order of Merit from University of Montreal.
Ema Ferreira
Ema Ferreira completed a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in Pharmacy from University of Montreal. She pursued her education with a graduate Pharm.D. program at the University of British Columbia and a residency in perinatology at BC Women and Children’s Hospital and Long Beach Memorial Hospital. She has a joint position between CHU Sainte-Justine and Faculty of Pharmacy where she is a full clinical professor teaching obstetrics and gynaecology therapeutics. At CHU Sainte-Justine, she is actively involved in patient care and is involved in research projects. She is the author of numerous publications and conferences on contraception and, drug use during pregnancy and lactation. She co-directed the publication of two editions of “Grossesse et allaitement: guide thérapeutique”. A third edition will be published in 2022.
Valérie Zaphiratos
Dr. Valerie Zaphiratos is an Obstetric Anesthesiologist who completed her Obstetric Anesthesia fellowship training at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada and her Anesthesiology residency at University of Montreal. She is currently the Assistant Chief of Anesthesia at Maisonneuve-Rosemont hospital in Montreal and is responsible for Obstetric Anesthesia. She is a Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Montreal and her research interests include uterotonics, labour pain, and morbidity of uterine repair during cesarean delivery. She is currently Chair of the Obstetrics section for the Canadian Anesthesiologists’ Society (CAS).
Philippe Richebé
Dr. Philippe Richebé, MD, PhD, DESAR, Full Professor with tenure, director of the research committee of the department of anesthesiology and pain medicine of University of Montréal, President of the Foundation of Anesthesia and Reanimation of Quebec (FARQ). Member of the Perioperative Anesthesia Clinical Trial (PACT) group and its steering committee affiliated with the Canadian Society of Anesthesia (CAS), Member of the Québécois Society of Anesthesiology (AAQ) and its meeting organisation committee, President of the Foundation of the AAQ, Member of the American (ASA) and French (SFAR) Societies of Anesthesiology, and SOAP. Member of the Editorial Borad of the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia and the ACCPM journal (French Society anesthesia).