ICES Research Forum

Mark is the Chief AI Officer at Western University and a professor in the Department of Computer Science, with cross-appointments in five other departments, the Rotman Institute of Philosophy, and the Western Institute for Neuroscience. He is also a faculty affiliate of Toronto’s Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Mark was named to Maclean’s “Power List 2024” of the top 100 Canadians and Constellation Research’s AI150 list of global AI leaders.

In October 2024, he was appointed NSERC Scholar in Residence in Artificial Intelligence. He has previously served as Vice-President (Research) at CIFAR, and held senior roles at Western, including Chief Digital Information Officer and Associate Vice-President (Research). Mark is the past chair of Compute Ontario and serves on several other boards.

Keynote Speaker

Morning panel: How will AI shape the future of ICES? Perspectives on the promise of AI for ICES

Vu Ngo is an AI and digital transformation strategist and the founder of C3LABS.AI. He collaborates with Fortune 500 companies and public institutions to enable digital transformation and AI that are equitable and put community needs first. For over 20 years, Vu has championed ethical AI, data equity, and systems that empower, not exclude.

As an ICES Board Director, he focuses on community engagement, community-led public health research, and public advisory, centring marginalized voices in policy and design. Vu advises community organizations, including the Canadian Red Cross and the Schalem Mental Health Network, on data strategy and innovatively leveraging AI to strengthen their mandates and community engagement.

Read Vu’s full bio

Morning panel: How will AI shape the future of ICES? Perspectives on the promise of AI for ICES

Dr. Amol Verma is a physician-scientist in general internal medicine at St. Michael’s Hospital and the Temerty professor of AI research and education in medicine at the University of Toronto. He is a health services researcher studying and improving hospital care using electronic clinical data. Dr. Verma co-leads GEMINI, Canada’s largest hospital clinical data research network, with data from >30 Ontario hospitals.

He completed medical training at the University of Toronto, a master’s at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and research fellowships through the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, the Canadian Frailty Network, and AMS Healthcare. He served on the Council of Canadian Academies Expert Panel on Health Data Sharing, is Provincial Clinical Lead for Quality Improvement in General Internal Medicine with Ontario Health and serves as Chair of the Researcher Council and board member of the Digital Research Alliance of Canada and AMS.

Morning panel: How will AI shape the future of ICES? Perspectives on the promise of AI for ICES

Sean Twyford (he/him) is the Assistant Deputy Minister of the Strategic Policy, Planning and French Language Services Division. In this role, his responsibilities include sector-driven research, the generation and activation of policy evidence, health innovation, strategy and policy development, intergovernmental relations, cross-government coordination, French language health services, Indigenous health policy and programs, and efforts to reduce health disparities for all Ontarians with a focus on underserved populations.

Read Sean’s full bio

Morning panel: How will AI shape the future of ICES? Perspectives on the promise of AI for ICES

Michael Schull is CEO at ICES, and professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto. Dr. Schull’s research focuses on health service utilization, quality of care and patient outcomes as they relate to emergency care, and the study of interventions designed to reduce emergency department waiting times. His studies use administrative datasets and linkages with clinical data, and examine the causes and consequences of emergency department overcrowding, variations in patient waiting times and pre-hospital care. He is currently working with other researchers and health system decision-makers to evaluate policy interventions designed to reduce emergency department waiting times, and innovative ways to better integrate healthcare between hospital and community providers. Dr. Schull practices as an emergency medicine specialist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto.

Morning panel (moderator)

Tara Gomes is Scientific Director of the Urban and Community Health Pillar at Unity Health Toronto, Program Director of the Ontario Drug Policy Research Network, and a scientist at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael’s Hospital and ICES. She is also an associate professor at the University of Toronto and holds a Canada Research Chair in Drug Policy Research and Substance Use. Her research program focuses on pharmacoepidemiology, drug safety and drug policy research, with a specific interest in developing evidence to inform policies that address the ongoing drug toxicity crisis across Canada and that integrate perspectives of impacted communities.

Afternoon panel: Research partnerships with people with lived experience: Perspectives on shifting paradigms 

Dr. Baiju Shah is a health services researcher and clinician-scientist in endocrinology. He is a senior core scientist at ICES, and a staff physician and Head of the Division of Endocrinology, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. He is a professor in the Department of Medicine and holds the Novo Nordisk Research Chair in Equitable Care of Diabetes from the University of Toronto. His research seeks to understand and improve the quality of care and long-term outcomes of people with diabetes. He has national and international leadership in several areas of research, including diabetes care in immigrant, indigenous and other disadvantaged populations; long-term cardiometabolic consequences for women following gestational diabetes; and novel models of healthcare delivery to improve outcomes.

Afternoon panel: Research partnerships with people with lived experience: Perspectives on shifting paradigms 

With over 30 years of experience in the healthcare sector, Kimberley has been afforded leadership opportunities in many facets of the continuum of care including chronic and rehabilitation hospital experiences, small and large academic community based acute care hospitals, community home healthcare and primary care settings.

In her current role, Kimberley guides WellFort toward a comprehensive model of health and wellbeing focussed on health and community care based on providing care catered to closing gaps related to the social determinants of health. With a passion for implementing a whole system view of integrated care Kimberley uses a collaborative approach to bring about transformational change within comprehensive team-based care.

Read Kimberley’s full bio

Afternoon panel: Research partnerships with people with lived experience: Perspectives on shifting paradigms 

Astrid Guttmann is a senior scientist and Chief Science Officer at ICES. She is also a general paediatrician and senior scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children, Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Child Health Services and Policy, professor of paediatrics, Health Policy and Public Health and co-Director of the Edwin S.H. Leong Centre for Healthy Children at the University of Toronto.

Afternoon panel (moderator)

Dr. Natasha Saunders is a general pediatrician at the Hospital for Sick Children, a senior associate scientist at the SickKids Research Institute, and a senior adjunct scientist at ICES in Toronto. She is also an associate professor in the Department of Paediatrics and Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. Dr. Saunders leads an applied health system and policy research program, producing evidence needed to guide and advocate for policies for children and youth. Her scholarly contributions largely use linked health administrative and demographic datasets and focus on firearm injury epidemiology, mental health system performance, and health system access and outcomes for children.

Breakout session: From evidence to action: Using health data to drive legislative change

Dr. Daniel Myran is a public health and preventative medicine physician, a family physician, and researcher. He holds a Canada Research Chair in Social Accountability at uOttawa and is an assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine. He is also a scientist at North York General Hospital. His program of research involves using health administrative data to examine the burden and societal impact of mental health conditions and substance use. His primary focus is evaluating the impacts of public policy on overall health and across systematically disadvantaged groups. He has completed some of the major studies of non-medical cannabis legalization in Canada. As a secondary area of interest, he uses big data to examine the health of physicians in Ontario.  

Breakout session: From evidence to action: Using health data to drive legislative change

Dr. Rinku Sutradhar is a senior scientist and biostatistician at ICES, where she leads the Cancer Research Program. She is also a professor of biostatistics at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. Her research is centered on developing innovative statistical methodologies for analyzing longitudinal data, with a particular focus on evaluating health services use among cancer patients and survivors in Ontario. More recently, her work has explored the integration of machine learning techniques to enhance the development of prediction models in healthcare. 

Breakout session: Seeing data differently: Regression for image prediction and a path toward neural networks

Dr. Andi Camden is an epidemiologist and senior research associate at the Edwin S.H. Leong Centre for Healthy Children at the Hospital for Sick Children, as well as an ICES fellow. She holds both a PhD and MPH in epidemiology from the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, where she also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Health and Society. Dr. Camden’s research uses administrative data to explore the impact of opioids during pregnancy on maternal and child health across the life course. She is currently leading the Canadian Perinatal Opioid Project alongside Dr. Astrid Guttmann and Dr. Hilary Brown. This initiative, funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada, aims to establish a pan-Canadian health data system to monitor perinatal opioid use and associated health outcomes across Canada.

Breakout session: Bringing data to life: Using innovative knowledge translation (KT) approaches to humanize data and communicate the ‘story’ of your research

Laura Ferreira-Legere is the Senior Manager, Public & Community Engagement, Knowledge Translation at ICES. As a registered nurse, she has held professional roles in clinical nursing practice in Atlantic Canada and nursing guideline development in Ontario. In her current role, Laura supports scientists and project teams to incorporate meaningful and equity-centered public and community engagement in research and analysis. Her team also supports facilitation for the ICES’ PAC and provides guidance on appropriate use of social and race-related data at ICES.

Breakout session: Bringing data to life: Using innovative knowledge translation (KT) approaches to humanize data and communicate the ‘story’ of your research

Anne Hayes is a health strategy and partnerships executive with over 20 years of experience in both government and university settings.  She has an international track record of developing strategic policy proposals through to approval, managing large public programs including research programs, and fostering novel partnership initiatives.  She is currently Director, Partnerships for Health Data Research Network Canada, focused on bringing together people and organizations across Canada for transformative and world-leading health data use.  Previously, she was the Director of the Research Analysis and Evaluation Branch of the Ontario Ministry of Health where she led a large team to generate, broker, and translate evidence for use in policy and programs.  She has a Master of Public Health from The University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill.

Breakout session: Accessing data and analytics from ICES for a provincial or pan-Canadian perspective

Minnie Ho is the Director of Data and Analytic Services (DAS). Minnie joined ICES in 2007 as an epidemiologist and during her tenure, has had a research focus in the area of aging, engaged extensively with voices across the health system, and helped to develop the current ICES-Ontario Health (Quality) collaboration.

In her current role, she oversees data access, analytics and reports, spanning a broad range of topics, led by external investigators and health system interest holders to conduct research and health system evaluation. Her unit supports third party researcher requests from the public and private sector, and health system interest holder and rights holder requests through the Applied Health Research Question Program.

Breakout session: Accessing data and analytics from ICES for a provincial or pan-Canadian perspective

Oliver is a member of Saugeen First Nation #29 with a background in university recruitment and psychological research at the undergraduate level. In his spare time, he continues to sharpen his creative skills in the realm of voice work.

Breakout session: Building future generations of First Nation, Métis and Inuit data scientists

Dr. Smylie is the Director of the Well Living House Action Research Centre for Indigenous Infant, Child, and Family Health and Wellbeing, Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Advancing Generative Health Services for Indigenous Populations in Canada, and professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. Dr. Smylie’s research focuses on addressing Indigenous health inequities in partnership with Indigenous communities. She is particularly focused on ensuring all First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Peoples are counted into health policy and planning wherever they live in ways that make sense to them; addressing anti-Indigenous racism in health services; and advancing community-rooted innovations in health services for Indigenous populations. She maintains a part-time clinical practice at Auduzhe Mino Nesewinong (Place of Healthy Breathing) and has practised and taught family medicine in a variety of Indigenous communities both urban and rural. A Métis woman, Dr. Smylie acknowledges her family, traditional teachers, and ceremonial lodge.

Breakout session: Building future generations of First Nation, Métis and Inuit data scientists

Dominique-Michelle Legacy is a dedicated leader in advancing Indigenous Sovereignty through meaningful partnerships and data governance. Dominique is committed to upholding and operationalizing Indigenous data governance principles to support Indigenous-led initiatives and research projects at ICES.

A Mi’kmaq of Sickadomec, registered to Elsipogtog First Nation, and French-Canadian ancestry. Dominique has over a decade of experience working alongside Indigenous communities. Her commitment to advancing Indigenous health equity is reflected in her active participation on various advisory committees and panels. Her unique blend of cultural insight and professional expertise positions her as a visionary leader in creating impactful partnerships and innovative solutions that align and promote Indigenous Sovereignty.

Breakout session: Building future generations of First Nation, Métis and Inuit data scientists

Lesley Plumptre is a staff scientist with Data and Analytic Services (DAS) at ICES Central. She facilitates projects requested by external knowledge users as part of the Applied Health Research Question (AHRQ) Program. Lesley’s previous work focused on the social determinants of health, particularly during the periconceptional period through early adolescence.  She completed her PhD in nutritional sciences at the University of Toronto, MSc in nutrition at King’s College London, and BSc in pharmacological chemistry at the University of California, San Diego.

Rapid fire sessions: Health and wellbeing of the Somali population in the Greater Toronto Area

Josh is a staff scientist at ICES North and affiliated with ICES’ Cancer Research Program. He is currently a PhD candidate in health research methodology in the Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact at McMaster University. His doctoral thesis leverages population-based cancer data at ICES to examine patterns of care among prostate cancer survivors following their treatment, with the goal of informing care pathways throughout survivorship.

Rapid fire sessions: Outpatient follow-up during survivorship: a population-based study of prostate cancer survivors after first-line radiation

Ghazal Fazli is an assistant professor at the University of Toronto Mississauga and her research explores the impact of social, community, and environmental determinants of prediabetes and diabetes. As an epidemiologist, Ghazal has deep interests for research and policy initiatives that promote action on the social and environmental determinants of health to improve wellbeing and quality of life across the lifespan. 

Rapid fire sessions: Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on type 2 diabetes screening and incidence

Dr. Kyla Naylor is an assistant professor in the Departments of Medicine and Epidemiology & Biostatistics at Western University, an adjunct scientist in the ICES Kidney, Dialysis and Transplantation Program, and a research scientist at London Health Sciences Centre Research Institute. She completed her PhD in epidemiology and biostatistics at Western University in 2015 and completed her post-doctoral training at ICES in 2018. Kyla’s research is primarily focused on using administrative healthcare databases to understand and improve access to kidney transplant. She is a recipient of a Canadian Institute of Health Research Health System Impact Embedded Early Career Researcher Award where she will spend four years working with two provincial organizations, the Trillium Gift of Life Network and Ontario Renal Network (Ontario Health), as an Embedded Scientist to improve equitable access to kidney transplant. 

Rapid fire sessions: Defining pre-emptive living kidney donor transplantation as a quality indicator

Bailey Milne is a PhD candidate in epidemiology whose research focuses on the risk of congenital anomalies among infants born to patients with infertility and endometriosis. Their work leverages population-based health data and advanced epidemiological methods to better understand how reproductive conditions shape perinatal outcomes, with the goal of improving reproductive care and informing strategies to support healthier pregnancies.

Rapid fire sessions: Effect of infertility on congenital anomalies: a population-based cohort study

Zoë Greenwald is an epidemiologist with interests in sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections and harm reduction. She is an ICES trainee in the Populations and Public Health Research Program, supervised by Dr. Jeff Kwong, and currently works as a Scientific Advisor in HIV surveillance at the Institut national de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ). She is completing her PhD in Epidemiology at the University of Toronto, where her thesis work focuses on hepatitis C among people who inject drugs in Ontario.

Rapid fire sessions: Advancing population health research methods for Hepatitis C among people who inject drugs in Ontario

Dr. Kamila Premji is a family physician practicing community-based, comprehensive family medicine in Ottawa. She is an assistant professor with the University of Ottawa, where she holds the Faculty of Medicine Clinical Research Chair in Universal Access to Comprehensive Primary Care. She is also a PSI Early Career Knowledge Translation Fellow. She recently successfully defended her PhD family medicine thesis at Western University, two chapters of which used ICES data. Inspired by her practice, she is passionate about research examining primary care access, care continuity, and health system integration.

Rapid fire sessions: Trends colliding: Aging comprehensive family physicians and the growing complexity of their patients

Michael Paterson joined ICES as a research coordinator in 1992 and became a scientist in 2008. He currently leads the ICES Chronic Disease and Pharmacotherapy Research Program. Mr. Paterson is an assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine at McMaster University and an assistant professor in the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto. He holds a bachelor’s degree in human biology from the University of Guelph and a master’s degree in physiology from the University of Toronto. 

Rapid fire sessions (Moderator)

Sylvia Jones is currently Ontario’s Deputy Premier and Minister of Health, where her focus is building a more connected and convenient health care system for all Ontarians.

In her role, Minister Jones has worked with health care partners from across Ontario to:

• Introduce and pass the Your Health Act to ensure Ontarians have faster access to publicly funded surgeries and procedures, while growing the health care workforce
• Introduce and pass the Convenient Care at Home Act to modernize and better integrate home care services
• Make the largest investment in pediatric care in the province’s history

Read Sylvia’s full bio

Deborah Richardson, LL.B, BA, is a proud Mi’gmaq woman from the Pabineau First Nation in New Brunswick and is the first Indigenous woman to serve as a Deputy Minister within the Ontario public service.

Over the past nine years, she has held diverse Deputy Minister positions across the OPS, including Deputy Minister of Treasury Board Secretariat, Deputy Solicitor General, Correctional Services, and Deputy Minister of Indigenous Affairs.

Deborah is a seasoned executive, business-savvy lawyer, and a change-maker with almost three decades of private, not-for-profit and public experience. She is known for her caring, collaborative style, and ability to nurture relationships, which has contributed to her reputation as an authentic leader and humanitarian.

Read Deborah’s full bio

Helen is currently the CEO of AMS Healthcare. Helen is also the chair of the board of Public Health Ontario and is a distinguished fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute. Helen had a 30-year progressive career in the public sector including 20 years working in the Government of Ontario, ten years working in government agencies as well as four years in management consulting.

From June 2018 to September 2021 Helen served as Ontario’s Deputy Minister of Health and led the health response to the Covid-19 pandemic as well as an ambitious health sector modernization agenda. During her time with the Ontario Government, Helen also served as the Deputy Minister of the Treasury Board; Citizenship, Immigration and international Trade, Seniors Affairs and Women’s Issues.