Dr. Quach-Thanh is the POPCORN director and NPA since the network’s inception in 2022. She is a pediatric infectious diseases physician and medical microbiologist at CHU Sainte-Justine and Professor in the Depts. of Microbiology, Infectious Diseases & Immunology and of Pediatrics at the U. de Montréal. She is the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Infection Prevention: From Hospital to the Community. Dr. Quach was the National Advisory Committee on Immunization chair (PHAC) during the early days of the pandemic (2017- 2021) and saw, first-hand, the challenges and gaps for vaccine programs decisions in a time of uncertainty. Since 2021, she has been the chair of the Quebec Immunization Committee (INSPQ). Dr. Quach is the physician in charge of infection prevention and control at the CHU Sainte-Justine (pediatric and maternal) where she was able to apply her expertise and knowledge to ensure hospital capacity and patients/healthcare workers safety. During the pandemic, she led various cohort studies on risk of reinfections in healthcare workers (RECOVER1 and 2, CIHR and CITF funding), serosurveys in healthcare workers (co-PI, INSPQ) and in children using residual samples in Quebec (MSSS) and Canada (CIHR). She has been site PI on industry-sponsored and academic-led clinical trials and understands what needs to be addressed. She has had the opportunity to work closely with PHAC, INSPQ and INESSS and maintains strong ties with them. She has secured over 19M CAD in grant funding as NPI or PI and has published over 190 articles in peer-reviewed journals.

Dr. Lacaze-Masmonteil is the scientific director of MICYRN and is responsible for implementing the Network’s scientific vision and direction in alignment with the strategic plan set by the Board of Directors (BOD). The coordinating role of MICYRN for the project POPCORN has been endorsed by the BOD. His leadership role in POPCORN therefore aligns with his MICYRN scientific director duties and responsibilities, including scientific and strategic leadership; operational, financial, program planning and management; and community relations and advocacy.

Dr.  Banerjee is Assistant Professor, ECR, and the Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Racism at the School of Population & Global Health, McGill U. Her interdisciplinary epidemiologic and qualitative research embeds a strong emphasis on community-based participatory pedagogy and research, which is grounded in collaboration and partnership with racialized communities funded by the Canadian Institute of Health Research, Social Science & Humanities Research Council and Public Health Agency of Canada. She developed and offered the first course on race and health in a school of public health in Canada. She is known for her anti-racism and anti-oppression practice in the learning environment and providing mentorship for racialized students in public health programs. She won the 2022 McGill Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine Teaching Innovation Award recognizing her unique pedagogy for inclusive public health education and serves on The Lancet’s International Advisory Board for Racial Inequalities. She will co-lead EDI+I with Dr. Li to address gaps in knowledge and practices for POPCORN 2.0.

Dr. Basta is an Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Occupational Health at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and holds a Canada Research Chair Tier 2 in Infectious Disease Prevention. As an infectious disease epidemiologist, Dr. Basta specializes in designing, implementing, and analyzing biological, clinical, and behavioral research to evaluate the impact of vaccines and immunization programs, to increase vaccine awareness, acceptance, and uptake, and to advance our understanding of the epidemiology and natural history of infectious diseases to aid in prevention.

Dr. Isabelle Boucoiran is Clinical Associate Professor at Université de Montréal (QC). She is a mid-career clinician-scientist at the School of Public Health and the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department of the CHU Sainte-Justine, where she is co-director of the Women and Children Infectious Disease Centre (CIME). Her main area of research is the diagnosis, management, and prevention of infections in pregnancy. Her research expertise is at the crossroads of several fields, from basic science to epidemiology and public health. Her research program is funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, the US National Institutes of Health, the “Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Santé” and the Quebec health ministry. Dr. Boucoiran is a new member of POPCORN 2.0, adding her expertise for pandemic preparedness in maternal health.

Dr. Buchanan is the lead of the POPCORN Patient Engagement Pillar. She is the program manager of Patient Engagement at SickKids Research Institute and the Ontario Child Health SUPPORT Unit (OCHSU). Dr. Buchanan is a person with lived experience as a chronic pain patient and a caregiver to a child with medical complexity. She has a PhD in Health Services Research and is an expert in patient and family engagement methodologies. Dr. Buchanan provides methodological support, training, and capacity building for patient-oriented research in child health across Ontario. Since 2016, she has co-authored the SPOR-funded Patient Orientated Research Curriculum in Child Health (PORCCH), launched the SickKids Patient Engagement in Research Program (PEiR), published in leading journals (CMAJ, JAMA Network and BMJ Open), grown a community of patient and family advisors to support research engagement; trained over 100 trainees and organized 2 patient/family engagement symposia.

Dr. Samina Ali is a pediatric emergency physician (Edmonton, Canada) and a Professor of Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine (University of Alberta). She trained at McGill University (Montreal, Canada) and Memorial University (Newfoundland, Canada). She is a national award-winning researcher, mentor, educator, and leader. Dr. Ali is currently Chair of Pediatric Emergency Research Canada (PERC), Research Director for Pediatric Emergency Medicine (University of Alberta), and the Western Canadian hub lead for Solutions for Kids in Pain (SKIP). Her research program concerns better treatment of children’s acute care with a focus on analgesic clinical trials, responsible prescribing of opioid analgesia, management of medical procedure-related pain, and more recently, equitable access to care and better meeting family needs in the ED. Dr. Ali has published over 200 articles in emergency and pain care and had her works featured in local and international media and podcasts.

Dr. Carwana is a pediatrician and early career clinician-investigator researching the intersection of pediatric clinical medicine, public health/policy, and the structural and social determinants of health. He is the Medical Director of the RICHER Social Pediatrics Program at BC Children’s Hospital, which provides outreach consultative care to equity-seeking children and families in Vancouver’s inner city, where his clinics focus on supporting families impacted by substance use. He also provides inpatient care as a pediatric hospitalist at BC Children’s Hospital. In addition to his clinical training, he completed a MPH in Epidemiology from Harvard University. Dr. Carwana’s research focus is on health equity, and research co-design and co-implementation with families experiencing structural marginalization. He is the Principal Investigator on multiple community-based participatory action research projects based in Vancouver. He serves as the Project Lead for Indirect Covid-19 Consequences for the POPCORN Platform, and the Group Lead for Health Equity and Integrated Knowledge Translation at the BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute. He is also President of the Social Pediatrics Section of the Canadian Pediatric Society and the BC Children’s Hospital representative on PIRN.

Dr. Constantin is an Associate Professor, Pediatrics, McGill University, Senior Clinician-Scientist at the RIMUHC, and Director of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Medicine Research at the Montreal Children’s Hospital. She was actively involved in the CCHCSP Executive Committee for 10 years where she served as Director of CCHCSP Curriculum and was leading the development/enhancement of the training curriculum and the oversight of all of the provincial CCHCSP centres). She was a past program director for pediatrics residency training (current interim director); she also was Assistant Dean of Postgraduate Medical Education at McGill University and University Lead for Competency Based Medical Education. She developed an innovative research education curriculum (PHRESCA: Pediatric Health Research Epidemiology Statistics CurriculA). She has held several mentorship and training leadership roles at the University and National levels (Past Assistant Dean, Postgraduate Medical Education; and Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada executive committee as the University (Postgraduate) Competency Based Medical Education lead). For her contributions and innovations to research education and mentorship, Dr Constantin was awarded the McGill Faculty Honour List for Education Excellence. She is currently i) Mentorship Lead of PIRN’s Executive Committee; ii) pediatrics residency program director and member of the National Royal College Pediatrics Specialty Committee; and iii) Advisor to the Dean’s Office of International Affairs, leading training, education, faculty development, and continuing professional development dossiers, partnering with the Royal College and International Partnerships.

Dr. Côté is a psychologist, researcher, and professor of public health at the University of Montreal. She heads the Observatory for Children’s Education and Health (OPES: https://www.observatoireenfants.ca/en/), a network of researchers funded by the Quebec Research Funds to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children’s bio-psychosocial development and to mitigate its impact. Her expertise is recognized at the national and international levels for the modeling of risk trajectories for psychosocial and educational problems and the implementation of early childhood preventative trials. Dr Côté’s expertise will allow POPCORN to address important gaps during this COVID-19 pandemic – 1) understanding of indirect consequences of the public health preventive measures on children’s development, from a longitudinal perspective; 2) identify the social inequalities exacerbated by the pandemic. Her expertise bridges diverse disciplines (i.e., psychology, education, psychoeducation, pediatrics, psychiatry, public health). She has published 194 peer-reviewed papers (122 since 2015), including 77 as senior author. Her papers were cited >10,900 times (h-index = 53). She has extensive experience in training research students (n=61) and in securing major grants to conduct population-based studies of child bio-psycho-social development. Dr. Côté serves as the education/social science expert for POPCORN.

Dr. Décary is Assistant Professor of Rehabilitation at University of Sherbrooke in Québec and ECR. He has been involved in Long COVID research since April 2020 having received CIHR grants to study rehabilitation care models. He was mandated by the SPOR Evidence Alliance, COVID-END, Alberta Health System and the Public Health Agency of Canada to conduct living systematic reviews of care models and management options for Long COVID. In August 2021, he joined the World Health Organization expert committee for Post COVID-19 Condition and authored the WHO Living Guidelines. He conducted multiples online webinars for rehabilitation professionals and primary care clinicians on the management of Long COVID. In Quebec, his clinical trial led to the development of a 1.3M$ primary care rehabilitation ecosystem now delivering care to hundreds of patients. He joined the Quebec Task Force for Long COVID which published clinical tools for rehabilitation and primary care clinicians. He is now a scientific consultant to the Ministry of Health to support the implementation of a 20M$ provincial network of 15 post-COVID clinics, including one for paediatrics population. In January 2023, he became the co-scientific director for Long COVID Web with Dr. Angela Cheung, a 20M$ investment from CIHR to coordinate Long COVID research across Canada. Dr. Décary is joining POPCORN 2.0 as the outpatient care models experts, using post-COVID conditions as the pilot.

Dr Olivier Drouin is a clinician-scientist in the Division of General Pediatrics at the CHU Sainte-Justine in Montréal. He is also a Clinical Associate Professor in both the Department of Pediatrics and Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at Université de Montréal. He holds a Clinical Research Scholar - Junior 2 award from the Fonds de recherche du Québec - Santé. His research expertise includes both inpatient and outpatient general pediatrics, health services research, behavioural sciences, implementation science, health economics and public health. He is is a board member of the Canadian Association for Health Services and Policy Research and national co-lead for research for the Pediatric Inpatient Research Network.

Dr. Fontela is the POPCORN Data Pillar co-lead since the network’s inception. She is a pediatric intensivist and epidemiologist at the Montreal Children’s Hospital and an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Pediatrics at McGill U. She is also FRQ-S Senior Clinical Research Scholar. Patricia has been the Chair of the Canadian Critical Care Pediatric Subgroup of the Canadian Critical Care Trials Group (CCCTG) since 2020. She has participated in several national and international studies on COVID-19 in adult and pediatric critical care patients. She is also the director of the Sepsis Canada Research Training Program and the co-director of the LifTING Research Training Program, both funded by CIHR. As a researcher, she has been the PI on several academic-led clinical trials that focus on infectious diseases in the pediatric critical care setting. Patricia is also the co-chair of the Canadian Pediatric Intensive Care Consortium (CanPICC), which includes all pediatric intensive care units in Canada. As such, she is developing a national database to collect prospective data on pediatric patients for research and surveillance purposes, which will increase efficiency in case of a new pandemic.

Dr. Baudouin Forgeot d'Arc is a psychiatrist-researcher, Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Université de Montréal, and Head of the Department of Psychiatry at CHU Sainte-Justine. He was a psychiatrist at Robert-Debré Hospital (Paris), then at the Autism Program at Rivière-des-Prairies Hospital (CIUSSSNIM). He created and leads the ECHO(r) telementoring program on mental health and neurodevelopment. His experimental work initiated with his PhD (Département d'Études Cognitives, École Normale Supérieure, Paris), and pursued as an FRQS researcher (junior 1, 2013-2017) contributed to defining the socio-cognitive profile associated with autism using behavioral studies, computational models and neuroimaging. He is one of the principal investigators of the thematic network 'pour transformer les soins en autisme' (FRQS) and the 'Québec 1000 families' project (Fondation Coutu). He also co-leads research and social innovation projects on social support and mental health for people with autism, such as the 'autisme-ensemble' platform (MEI and Public Health Agency of Canada) and the 'pouvoir d'agir et soins sans stigma' experiential knowledge-based training project (CIHR).

Dr. Galanis is a public health physician with 20 years of experience in infectious disease surveillance, prevention and control at the provincial, national and international levels. Dr Galanis is a Clinical Professor at UBC with over 50 peer-reviewed publications and is currently working at the Public Health Agency of Canada as the Director General of a centre on surveillance, risk assessment and behavioural sciences. Dr Galanis is POPCORN's Principal Knowledge User through the federal lens (PHAC).

Dr. Gantt is a POPCORN principal investigator and the Biobanking Lead who helped to craft the vision of POPCORN. He is a pediatric infectious diseases physician and the Director of Clinical Research at CHU Sainte-Justine, and Professor in the Depts. of Microbiology, Infectious Diseases & Immunology and of Pediatrics at the Université de Montréal. Dr. Gantt is a clinician-scientist who has 92 peer-reviewed publications and has received $16,445,495 in grant funding as PI or co-PI. Prior to his roles in Montreal, he was Director of Clinical Research at BCCH and Head of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at UBC. He leads numerous cohort studies of viral transmission and pathogenesis that incorporate epidemiology, molecular virology, immunology, and mathematical modeling. He is also a clinical trialist and CIRN investigator who has conducted numerous investigator-initiated and industry interventional studies of vaccines and therapeutics. Of note, he has developed clinical trial protocols for Moderna, and serves as a consultant on vaccine development to numerous other companies. Dr. Gantt has served on the board of MICYRN for the last 4 years and will take over as chair of the executive in September. He was a voting member of NACI during the first years of the COVID-19 pandemic and sat on the Pan-Canadian Public Health Network Canadian Pandemic Influenza Preparedness (CPIP) Task Group from 2016-18. He has also been asked to inform INESSS policy decision-making. Dr. Gantt is a proven scientific leader who has a broad insight into public and private research, public health policy, and industry relations, and who is also committed to infrastructure development.

Dr. Gill is an Early Career Researcher, hospital pediatrician, Scientist at SickKids and its Research Institute, Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto and Co-Founder and Chair of the Canadian Paediatric Inpatient Research Network (PIRN). He is an epidemiologist and national leader in patient-oriented research in Pediatric Hospital Medicine. He conducts outcomes-based comparative effectiveness, patient-oriented and implementation science research, with experience leading large multisite studies and using administrative data. In his role as one of POPCORN's ECRs and Inpatient Medicine Lead, Dr. Gill is part of the scientific, governance, and executive committees.

Dr. Kellner is a clinician, clinical investigator, and medical leader with extensive experience with organizations related to child health and research. He started his career as a Pediatric Emergency Medicine specialist, and later became a specialist in Pediatric Infectious Diseases. For more than 25 years, he has led or collaborated in epidemiologic research and clinical trials focused on vaccine preventable infections with a particular focus on Streptococcus pneumoniae infections. He established multiple research teams in Calgary, and is a member of several national research networks, including the Canadian Immunization Research Network (CIRN), Canadian National Vaccine Safety Network (CANVAS) and Immunization Monitoring Program, Active (IMPACT). He has 137 peer-reviewed publications and has received, through the University of Calgary, ~$10M in grant funding as PI or co-PI and ~$65M in funding as co-I from peer-reviewed agencies, grants-in-aid, and contracts. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Kellner was a member of the federal COVID-19 Immunity Task Force Leadership Group throughout its mandate from 2020 to 2022, and he was Co-Chair of the CITF’s Field Studies Working Party and Lead of the Pediatric Network. He also led a large longitudinal serosurvey of SARS-CoV-2 responses in children in southern Alberta (AB3C). As a medical leader, Dr. Kellner was Chair/Chief of the Dept. of Pediatrics at the University of Calgary and Calgary Zone of Alberta Health Services from 2008 to 2018. During this time, the Department’s clinical and academic faculty increased by 75% to over 400 members, leading to significant advances in clinical services, education, and research productivity. He also led national organizations, including three years as President of the Paediatric Chairs of Canada. Dr. Kellner is Chair of the POPCORN Scientific Committee.

Dr. Lisa Knisley was recently appointed as an Assistant Professor within the College of Nursing at the University of Manitoba. She has been the Executive Director since 2012 for Translating Emergency Knowledge for Kids (TREKK), a national knowledge mobilization network based at the Children's Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba. Through TREKK, Lisa leads provincial and national research to accelerate the speed at which the latest evidence in children’s emergency care is accessible to and useful for healthcare providers and patients/families. Lisa’s POPCORN ENRICH mentor is Dr. Terry Klassen.

Dr. Li is co-lead of the EDI+I pillar. Her clinical and research pursuits aim to advance health equity. She is a mid-career clinician-scientist at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre, associate professor in the Dept. of Pediatrics at McGill U., and general pediatrician at the Montreal Children’s Hospital and CLSC Parc Extension, where her outpatient clinical work focuses on immigrant and refugee populations. She has also recently joined the Northern and Native Child Health Program at the Montreal Children’s Hospital to provide care to Inuit children in Ungava Bay. She is a researcher member of SHERPA, a research institute to advance knowledge and best practices in primary care services in the multi-ethnic context. She is NPA on a CIHR-funded RCT to co-design a patient navigator intervention for migrant children and families and NPA on a CIHR planning grant to explore partnerships with Indigenous Communities for the Canadian Pediatric Inpatient Research Network. She contributes her EDI expertise as co-PI on the CIHR-funded Accelerating Clinical Trials (ACT) Canada ($39 million) and co-I on a CIHR team grant (CAPACITY; $2 million) to create a platform for diabetes research across pediatric hospitals in Canada. She leads the EDI+I team activities, including team training focused on EDI learning based on a research team needs, 2 qualitative studies to generate knowledge on lessons learned in working with marginalized communities during the pandemic, exploring partnerships with Indigenous communities. She will work to continue to address the gaps in EDI+I knowledge and practices within the research team through multifaceted learning opportunities, continue to support anti-oppressive and culturally safe research, and continue to develop community partnerships for ongoing pandemic preparedness.

Dr. Murthy is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Murthy is a Researcher at BC Children's Hospital with a focus on biomarkers in pediatric sepsis. Infections in children are still a major cause of early morbidity and mortality throughout the world, despite the advances made in preventive care. Infections are often a reason for children to become critically ill, and often occur in the critically ill child. His research focuses upon stemming this burden through optimizing their management in a variety of settings. Additionally, the ability of various settings and healthcare systems to cost-effectively manage critically ill children, especially those with infection, is an area of focus.

Dr. Portales-Casamar is the co-lead of the POPCORN Data Governance Pillar. She is the director of data management and IT infrastructure at the research centre at CHU Sainte-Justine (CHUSJ). She has a PhD in neuroscience and postdoctoral training in bioinformatics and genomics, and is an expert in clinical research informatics, research data management and standardization, and repurposing of clinical data for research. She has 42 peer-reviewed publications and has received $3,029,000 in grant funding as PI or co-PI. She contributed to the development of bioinformatics tools and led the implementation of national data platforms and registries. For the past 10 years, she has been developing and maintaining informatics infrastructure to support clinical research activities at Canadian pediatric hospitals, including support for software such as REDCap for electronic data capture, and OpenSpecimen or ATIM for biobanking inventory management. Her research interests lie at the interface between health sciences, bioinformatics, and clinical informatics, focusing on methodologies to integrate heterogeneous datasets and facilitate re-use of existing data while ensuring data privacy and security.

Dr. Roumeliotis is a pediatric intensivist and clinician scientist at CHU Sainte-Justine. Her research focuses on safety systems in the intensive care unit. After completing her M.Sc. at U Montréal, she pursued her pediatric intensive care fellowship and a Ph.D. in Clinical Epidemiology and Health Services at the U of Toronto (2021). Her doctoral work was funded by the Fonds de Recherche Quebec Santé (FRQS) and the Canadian Critical Care Trials Group (CCCTG). As an early career investigator, she is support by the FRQS as a junior 1 scholar, and has received CIHR funding for two projects: a prospective multicenter cohort evaluating medication errors and adverse drug events in critical care, and for a Pan-Canadian cohort evaluating the safety of discharge home directly from the PICU. She participates in the ‘comité délibératif permanent’ of Institut national d'excellence en santé et services sociaux in Quebec (INESSS). Within the POPCORN platform, Dr. Roumeliotis led two studies on the mental health hospitalizations in youth during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the association between eating disorder hospitalizations and pandemic restrictions. She continues to work in partnership with POPCORN and youth with lived experience to explore the indirect consequences of the pandemic on youth.

Dr. Rufiange has been in the field of Clinical Research for her entire career. She was an Analyst in a bioanalytical lab during her undergrad and thereafter, took the role of PK Scientist in her early years after her PhD. She then became a Project Manager for Phase I studies at Algorithme Pharma, a CRO based in Montreal. She obtained her PMP certification in 2014; then moved on to an Academic Research Organization, affiliated with Montreal Heart Institute, in 2017 as a Sr Project Manager for multicentric QC/CAN and international Phase II/III/IV clinical trials, managing both pharmaceutical industry studies and academic Investigator-initiated studies. Dr. Rufiange joins POPCORN as the Opertaions Manager working closely alongside the Network Director.

Dr. Sadarangani is an Associate Professor in the UBC Dept. of Pediatrics, and Director of the Vaccine Evaluation Center (VEC) at BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute (BCCHR). His research encompasses the full breadth of vaccine science via a unique combination of laboratory, clinical and epidemiologic research. His work has informed strategies to combat the recent resurgence in infant pertussis (whooping cough) via immunization in pregnancy, a policy now adopted by many countries. He helped optimize current global immunization programs against Streptococcus pneumoniae and Neisseria meningitidis, the leading causes of septicemia and bacterial meningitis in childhood. Over his career, Dr. Sadarangani has shown strong capacity to secure funding with ~$51M in grants as PI and ~$113M as co-I from competitive agencies (e.g., CIHR, PHAC). He has published 170 peer-reviewed papers in high-impact journals (e.g., Nature Immunology). He was a member of the Systems Immunology Task Force for CEPI to establish a harmonized approach to immunologic evaluation of novel vaccine technologies, including mRNA vaccines, and an invited member of their translational immunology group to advise global vaccine manufacturers about best approaches for developing and evaluating highly immunogenic vaccines – this advice was vital in the international response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He is co-PI of the Immunization Monitoring Program ACTive (IMPACT) Network (research of vaccine preventable diseases and vaccine-related adverse events in 13 pediatric hospitals) – which has supported almost all immunization program guidelines in Canada. He is Chair, Canadian Association for Immunization Research, Evaluation and Education (CAIRE). CAIRE facilitates direct interactions of policy makers, industry, public health, clinicians, and researchers to ensure a rapid integrated approach for knowledge mobilization. Dr. Sadarangani is the pillar lead for infectious diseases.