BOARD OF DIRECTORS
2024 – 2026
President:Hilary Brown
Hilary Brown, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, in the Department of Health & Society and the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. She is cross-appointed to the Temerty Faculty of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry and is an Adjunct Scientist at Women’s College Hospital and ICES. Dr. Brown holds a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Disability & Reproductive Health. Her research program uses epidemiologic methods to examine maternal and child health and mental health across the life course, with a particular focus on populations with disabilities and chronic disease, health equity, and the social determinants of health.
Past President:Eduardo Franco
Eduardo Franco is Professor of Oncology and Epidemiology; Chairman, Department of Oncology; and Director, Division of Cancer Epidemiology, McGill University, Montreal. Since 1985, his research has focused on cancer epidemiology and prevention, topics on which he has published hundreds of articles and two books. He mentored 135 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute and Editor Emeritus of Preventive Medicine. He received the Canadian Cancer Research Alliance’s Distinguished Service to Cancer Research Award; Canadian Cancer Society’s Warwick Prize; Geoffrey Howe Outstanding Contribution Award from the Canadian Society for Epidemiology and Biostatistics; University of British Columbia’s Chew Wei Memorial Prize in Cancer Research; and McLaughlin-Gallie Award from the Royal College of Physicians of Canada. He is Officer of the Order of Canada and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.
Vice President:Xiangfei Meng
Xiangfei Meng is an Associate Professor at the McGill University, a Researcher at the Douglas Research Centre, and a Director of the Mental health and Society Division at the Douglas – as well as a FRSQ research scholar, has provided such a unique opportunity to focus on specific biopsychosocial characteristics (early-life exposures, social support, common genetic variants), which are closely related, both directly or indirectly, to stress and act as both risk or protective factors for mental health/illness and cognitive impairment. Her leadership in understanding stress-related biopsychosocial characteristics in mental illnesses and population mental health through rigorous quantitative approaches is attested by her publications, over 90 peer-reviewed publications (mostly first/corresponding authors), and over 70 presentations at national and international conferences. Her H-index (Google scholar: 27 in June 2022) is relatively high for a psychiatric epidemiologist at her career stage. She has attracted several competitive research grants and research contracts from CIHR, SSHRC, CFREF, CIMVHR, FRQS, and CITF as Nominated Principal Investigator and received over $ 2.3 million as a PI and over $1.4 million as co-investigator in research funding.
Treasurer:Laura Duncan
Laura Duncan has a PhD in Health Research Methodology, is an Assistant Professor (Part Time) in the Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence & Impact, and is the Research Coordinator for the Ontario Child Health Study at the Offord Centre for Child Studies, in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences, at McMaster University. She completed an MA in Sociology at McMaster University and worked as an Analyst for Statistics Canada before joining the Offord Centre for Child Studies.
Secretary:Fareha Nishat
Fareha Nishat is a PhD student in Epidemiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, supervised by Dr. Hilary Brown. Her PhD work will explore disability and multimorbidity using health administrative data. Fareha holds a HBSc in Neuroscience and Mental Health and an MPH in Epidemiology from the University of Toronto.
Student Representative:Brianna Frangione
Brianna Frangione is a PhD student in epidemiology in the School of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Ottawa. She is co-supervised by Dr. Paul Villeneuve and Dr. Ian Colman, and is interested in examining the association between occupational exposure to ionizing radiation and the incidence and mortality of neurodegenerative diseases, such as dementia. She serves as a junior content expert for the epidemiology subgroup for the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation. Other than academics, she loves listening to audiobooks, painting with oil pastels, and finding new places to eat! Brianna is thrilled to be appointed as the student representative for the Canadian Society for Epidemiology and Biostatistics and looks forward to interacting with other student volunteers and board members!
Members at Large
Membership & Engagement:Lisa Lix
Lisa Lix is a Professor of Biostatistics and Associate Head in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba, Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Methods for Electronic Health Data Quality, and Director of Data Science in the George & Fay Yee Centre for Healthcare Innovation at the University of Manitoba. Her research expertise lies in statistical methods for complex healthcare data, chronic disease surveillance methods, and patient-reported outcome measures. She collaborates widely with research groups and organizations across Canada, including Health Data Research Network Canada, Canadian Network for Observational Drug Effect Studies, and the Public Health Agency of Canada. In addition to contributing to leadership of the AI4PH National Training Platform, she is also co-lead of the Visual and Automated Disease Analytics (VADA) Program at the University of Manitoba and University of Victoria.
Communications:Iwona Bielska
Dr. Iwona Bielska is an epidemiologist and health services researcher with work experience in academic and government settings. She is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Health Policy and Management, Institute of Public Health at Jagiellonian University, as well as an Assistant Professor (Part-Time) in the Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence and Impact (HEI), Faculty of Health Sciences at McMaster University. Dr. Bielska completed a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)-funded Health System Impact Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Department of HEI and the Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis (CHEPA) at McMaster University. She holds a PhD in Epidemiology from the Department of Public Health Sciences at Queen’s University. Dr. Bielska is certified as a Project Management Professional (PMP). Previously, she held the position of Lead for Business Intelligence and Analytics at Ontario Health. Currently, Dr. Bielska is the Principal Investigator of a research project examining high use of the emergency department, co-funded by the Polish National Science Centre and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement through the POLONEZ BIS Grant, undertaken at Jagiellonian University. Dr. Bielska is knowledgeable about health data analytics to support the equitable distribution of health resources, monitoring of health system performance, health systems planning, and hospital capacity assessments in response to system pressures. Through her employment and education, Dr. Bielska has developed a broad understanding of the public health system across numerous jurisdictions. She has experience conducting quantitative and qualitative studies, as well as analyzing and interpreting research findings from large clinical databases, administrative datasets, and population health surveys.
Communauté Francophone:Marie-Claude Rousseau
Marie-Claude Rousseau, PhD, is a Full Professor at Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) – Centre Armand-Frappier Santé Biotechnologie in Laval (Québec). She is also an Adjunct Professor at the School of Public Health, Université de Montréal, and an Affiliated Scientist at the Université de Montréal Hospital (CHUM) Research Centre. Her research focuses on the epidemiology of inflammatory, autoimmune, and infectious diseases with an interest in factors impacting the immune response and their role in etiology or prevention. She is an expert in the long-term specific and non-specific effects of bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccination. She has developed an extensive research infrastructure linking provincial administrative databases, enriched by ad hoc data collections in subgroups of participants.
CSEB-SER Liaison:Anita Koushik
Dr. Anita Koushik is a Professor in the Gerald Bronfman Department of Oncology, Principal Scientist at St. Mary’s Research Centre and inaugural holder of the McGill University Chair in Community Cancer Care at St. Mary’s. Since August 2024, she is Director of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology. Her research program aims to increase our understanding of the etiology of cancer in order to improve primary prevention and risk assessment efforts. She also conducts research on the identification of modifiable factors that can improve prognosis and quality of life of cancer survivors. Her current research focuses on ovarian cancer and is based on a population-based case-control study and a prospective cohort of survivors. With these studies, she is part of the Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium. Current projects on ovarian cancer include understanding the role of lifestyle factors over the life course in its development, the impact of contraception types on its incidence, and how lifestyle may influence prognosis and quality of life among survivors. Dr. Koushik received a BSc in Pharmacology from the University of Alberta in 1993, an MSc in Community Health & Epidemiology from Queen’s University in 1999, and a PhD in Epidemiology & Biostatistics from McGill University in 2004. She then conducted postdoctoral training in the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. She has developed and taught courses in epidemiologic methods at the introductory, intermediate and advanced levels.
INEP Representative:Laura N. Anderson
Laura N. Anderson, PhD, is an Associate Professor in Public Health in the Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact, at McMaster University. She is also a Member of the Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis (CHEPA) at McMaster University, an Adjunct Scientist in the division of Child Health Evaluative Sciences at the SickKids Research Institute, and a Visiting Scientist at Public Health Ontario. Dr. Anderson’s primary area of research is population and public health with a focus on life course epidemiology and the primary prevention of chronic diseases, including obesity, across all life stages.