Dr. Martine Duclos is an endocrinologist and physiologist and the Director of the Department of Sport Medicine at the University Hospital of Clermont-Ferrand. She is a professor of Sport Medicine and Biology. As a researcher within the Human Nutrition Research Unit (INRA-Universite d’Auvergne,) she performs clinical research related to the study of the beneficial effects of physical activity for the general public and more particularly for people with chronic diseases or conditions such as obesity, cardiometabolic disease or cancers, as well as in the context of aging. She has a strong interest in studying hormonal adaptation to exercise. She is a member of “l’alliance France – pour le mieux-vivre” “France alliance for wellness and health” which advocates quality of life improvement and for combating obesity and cardio-metabolic diseases.
Dr. Christo El Morr holds a PhD in biomedical engineering from University of Technology of Compiègne, France. He is an Assistant Professor of Health Informatics and Undergraduate Program Director at the School of Health Policy and Management (SHPM), York University (YorkU). Dr. El Morr is an expert in health virtual communities, eHealth, PACS and decision support systems. He holds a Research Scientist Award from the North York General Hospital where he is the Principal Investigator on a project that investigates hospital re-admission rates. He is the current Principal Investigator of two projecst on Health Virtual Communities for Chronic Diseases Management. He has already published the first results of a Virtual Community for Chronic Kidney Diseases in collaboration with the technology partner ForAHealthyMe and Dr. Jeffrey Perl (St. Michael’s Hospital). The other Virtual Community is focused on Peripheral Arterial Diseases Management with Dr. Mohammed Al Omran (Chief of Vascular Surgery Division, (St. Michael’sHopsital). He previously led a project on Knowledge Networks Virtual Community for human rights monitoring in the international Disability Rights Promotion International (DRPI). He has more than 35 publications, including 2 books one of which is on virtual communities.
Dr. Tara Haas is a Associate Professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Science, Faculty of Health, York University. She is currently co-leading the Angiogenesis Research Group at York University. She is a member of the Microcirculatory Society. She studies the molecular mechanisms that control the growth of blood vessels.
Her recent work aims to identify the molecular mechanisms that hinder recovery of blood flow within the skeletal muscle during peripheral arterial disease. She is leading innovative approaches to explore potential new therapeutic targets and to identify biomarkers that associate with the propensity to initiate capillary growth in ischemic muscle. Her works is funded through Canadian agencies such as the NSERC, Heart and Stroke Foundation and CIHR.
Dr. Guillaume Mahé, is an Associate Professor of Vascular Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine, University Hospital Center at Rennes (France), Research Collaborator, Mayo Clinic (USA). His area of research is related to Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD). Within the Clinical Investigation Center (CIC 1414, INSERM, CHU and University of Rennes). Dr. Mahé is leading a research team ‘’Ischemia, macro- and micro-circulation’’ that mostly performs clinical studies. His research mainly focuses on the study of the physiopathologic and functional consequences of ischemia and reperfusion in patients with PAD. His team also works on the use of different techniques to evaluate the ambulatory walking ability of patients with PAD. Dr. Mahé also has a strong expertise in evaluating vascular health through the non-invasive investigation of the macro- and micro-circulation using non-invasive imaging techniques (eg laser Speckle).
Dr. Pierre Maret, is a professor in computer science at the University of Lyon-Saint Etienne (France). He works on applied informatics, especially in the domain of health, culture and social sciences. His field of research is data modeling, semantic web, information sharing in the context of sensor networks and virtual communities. He has been involved into the design of health-related information systems in partnership with companies in France and Japan, with the University of Tokyo (Japan), York University (Canada), University of Twente (Netherlands). He has been Project Professor at the University of Tokyo and Invited Fellow at the University of Karlsruhe (Germany). He is currently leading a French-German doctoral college, and he participates in a European Marie Skłodowska-Curie action focusing on the topic Linked data and question answering. He is co-chairing the workshop Web Intelligence and Communities hosted in the major conference WWW (International World Wide Web Conference).
Dr. Tami Martino is an Associate Professor in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Guelph, Director of the Centre for Cardiovascular Research, and on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Society for Chronobiology. Her area of research is related to the physiologic and molecular basis of cardiovascular disease. Her work explores the role of the circadian rhythms on the pathophysiology of cardiovascular diseases with a focus on myocardial infarction (heart attack) and heart failure. Dr. Martino is using “omics” approaches to elucidate the molecular processes that are altered by cardiovascular diseases and to identify time-of-day gene and protein biomarkers for heart disease, i.e chronobiomarkers. Her work aims to help develop new therapeutic approaches for the management of heart disease through the targeting of the circadian processes. Her research is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada (HSFC), Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI), and the Ontario Cancer Biomarker Network.
Dr. Alexandre Stewart is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine and in the Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Ottawa. He is a principal investigator at the Heart Institute at the University of Ottawa. Dr. Stewart supervises the Ruddy Canadian Cardiovascular Genetics Centre whereby investigators perform research related to inherited cardiovascular diseases. Dr. Stewart’s research focuses on cardiovascular genetics and the identification of genetic risk factors. He is leading a research team that discovered the 9p21 locus as an independent risk factor for heart attack and myocardial infarction. His current work aims to elucidate how genetic variants impact the risk of Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) and to transform the knowledge gained from genome wide association studies to therapeutic applications. His work is funded through Canadian agencies such as the NSERC and the CIHR.
Dr. Sophie Visvikis-Siest is a Researcher within the INSERM (French Institute for health and biomedical research). She is the director of the INSERM UMR U1122, “Gene-environment interactions in cardiovascular physiopathology (http://www.u1122.inserm.fr/en/). She also leads a Biological Resources Center. She is board member and vice-president of the European Society of Predictive Medicine from its creation at 2009 (www.euspm.org). She is board member, treasurer and chair of the ‘meetings’ division of the European Society of Pharmacogenomics and Personalized Therapy (www.esptnet.eu). She participates in BBMRI (Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Research Infrastructure) European Biobanking initiative and is one of the pioneers in Biobanking founded by INSERM and ANR in France. She has a long studying research experience in acquisition and successful execution of public, academic, industrial and EC founded projects. Her main research interests are related to public health, prevention, cardiovascular diseases, genetic epidemiology, pharmacogenomics, inflammation and VEGF. She is the scientific director of the STANISLAS Cohort origin project, the STANISLAS Family Study (SFS), based on 1,006 families followed for 15 years. "
