MODERATOR: Sheena Josselyn, PhD
Senior Scientist, Neurosciences & Mental Health, SickKids

Professor, Departments of Psychology and Physiology, University of Toronto

Tiago Mestre, MSc MD
Scientist, Neuroscience Program,
Ottawa Hospital Research Institute

Neurologist, Neurology, Medicine,
The Ottawa Hospital

Associate Professor, Medicine, Neurology, University of Ottawa

Dr. Tiago Mestre has dedicated his clinical research to the development of innovative, feasible high-quality care delivery for chronic neurodegenerative disorders. With an aging population, the impact of these neurological conditions is expected to continue to increase significantly and impose an unsustainable burden on the Canadian healthcare system. The solutions evaluated by Dr. Mestre are focused on care integration with a focus on community care with streamlined access to existing care resources, patient empowerment and technology-enabled care. His research has the potential to have an impact on the life of Canadians today.

Annie Robitaille, PhD
Research Chair, Frailty-Informed Care, Perley and Rideau Veterans’ Health Centre

Assistant Professor, Interdisciplinary School of Health Sciences, University of Ottawa

Dr. Annie Robitaille’s current research focuses on better understanding the biopsychosocial factors related to the aging process with much of her research focusing specifically on those living with frailty in the community and in long-term care homes. Her research also aims to improve the quality of life and reduce social isolation of older adults living with frailty across the continuum of care and their caregivers. In the past, her research focused on the analysis of longitudinal studies in order to answer questions about between-person and within-person change in aging-related processes. Her postdoctoral research focused on better understanding responsive behaviours for people living with dementia throughout the continuum of care.

Amanda Grenier, PhD
Professor, Factor Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto and Baycrest Hospital

Dr. Amanda Grenier uses an interdisciplinary approach and works with older adults to examine social policies in care and people’s experiences with aging. She has gathered perspectives from older adults on life course transitions, frailty, aging with a disability, homelessness, social isolation, and precarious aging, among other topics. Her work helps Canada better understand disadvantage and inequality among older people, and to develop theory, research, policy, and practice that strives for meaningful inclusion of diverse older people, through co-produced research and community engagement. Her work is critical to help us gain a better understanding of aging in vulnerable populations, which is crucial for ensuring that brain health is optimized in all older adults, and to scale-up solutions to promote age-inclusive futures in society, and everyday practice with older people.

Howard Abrams, BSc Eng, MD FRCPC
Associate Professor of Medicine, University of Toronto

Director, OpenLab, Toronto General Hospital

Medical Lead, NORC Innovation Centre, University Health Network

Dr. Howard Abrams holds degrees in Engineering and Medicine and is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto. He is a consultant in Internal Medicine at Toronto’s University Health Network (UHN) and Sinai Health System (SHS) and is the Director of OpenLab, a design and innovation group based at Toronto General Hospital that looks for creative solutions at the intersection of health and society. He currently is the Medical Lead for the NORC Innovation Centre at UHN whose mission is to re-design the future of aging in place.

Rafik Goubran, PhD
Vice President (Research and International) & Chancellor’s Professor, Carleton University

Affiliate Investigator, Bruyère Research Institute

Dr. Rafik Goubran has been a key proponent of the partnership between Carleton University and the Bruyère Research Institute. Beginning as a relationship around technology, namely smart apartment technologies for seniors which Goubran directly contributed to in a scientific capacity, the collaborative partnership has expanded to other clinical areas, including driving simulation for cognitive assessment, industrial design of long-term care, and is now progressing into wound care. As VP of Research and International at Carleton, Goubran’s work with Heidi Sveistrup, CEO of Bruyère Research Institute, has solidified a research partnership at the highest levels of leadership, creating a collaborative space for the institutions to leverage each other’s respective expertise. The integration of academic and hospital environments has built bridges between academia and the hospital to answer health questions in novel and comprehensive ways.

Frank Knoefel, MD
Associate Professor, University of Ottawa, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Family Medicine

Physician, Bruyère Memory Program

Senior Investigator, Bruyère Research Institute

Dr. Frank Knoefel is a physician at the Bruyere Memory Program and Senior Investigator at the Bruyere Research Institute. In addition to his appointment at the Faculty of Medicine, he has an appointment as Adjunct Research Professor in Systems and Computer Engineering at Carleton. He is also co-founder of the AGE-WELL National Innovation Hub on Sensors and Analytics for Monitoring Mobility and Memory (SAM3). His research is in the use of technology to facilitate Aging in Place as well as cognitive aging and dementia.

Lisa Barrett, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Microbiology & Immunology & Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Dalhousie University

Nova Scotia Health Authority

Dr. Lisa Barrett is an expert in infectious diseases and a clinician scientist. She worked with the COVID-19 Immunity Task Force (CITF) to lead a study in the Maritimes aimed at determining which health factors cause long-term care residents to experience severe COVID-19 outcomes, including death. The study is also investigating vaccine effectiveness in its elderly population. Dr. Barrett also leads the Senescence, Aging, Infection and Immunity Laboratory (SAIL) at Dalhousie University that studies immune responses in chronic and persistent viral infections (HIV, hepatitis C) and the modulation of the immune response to generate therapeutic and prophylactic vaccines in persistent viral infections. She has contributed to developing clinical implementation of new hepatitis C treatments at a provincial level. SAIL is also working to understand how the immune system ages during chronologic aging and how this impacts poor responses to vaccines and declining health in the elderly.

Etienne Sibille, PhD
Chair & Deputy Director and Senior Scientist, Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute, CAMH

Professor, Department of Psychiatry & Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Toronto

Dr. Etienne Sibille specializes in exploring the biological connections between memory function, mental illness and aging. He and his team are working towards a novel discovery that could revolutionize how we diagnose and treat the aging brain. There are currently no drugs on the market that improve cognitive deficit (e.g., memory loss and thinking problems), whether associated with depression, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, or the natural effects of aging. However, in pre-clinical work with molecular biomarkers that target the GABA neurotransmitter system, Dr. Sibille has found a treatment that not only appears to delay or prevent memory loss, it actually reverses it. Meaningful progress in drug development for mental illness has been stalled for decades. This discovery represents a significant leap forward in the pursuit of developing new, targeted medications. Since these results are based on a decade of pre-clinical work, Dr. Sibille believes a new drug based on this research could become widely available to the public as soon as five to seven years from now.