New Investigator Biographies 2015

 

 

 

Associate Professor, Department of Surgery & Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto
Hepatobiliary & Pancreatic Surgical Oncology , University Health Network, University of Toronto
Lead, Quality and Knowledge Transfer, Surgical Oncology Program, Cancer Care Ontario
Vice-President, Ontario Association of General Surgeons
Secretary, Section of General Surgery, Ontario Medical Association

Dr. Wei is a Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary (HPB) surgical oncologist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network in Toronto Canada. She received her MD from McGill University, her General Surgery fellowship from the University of Toronto, and her HPB fellowship from the Toronto General Hospital. In addition, she holds MSc degrees in both Cell Biology and Clinical Epidemiology from the University of Toronto.

Dr Wei is a Clinician-Investigator at the University Health Network. She has an active clinical practice in HPB oncology and spearheaded the development of an advanced laparoscopic HPB surgery program. Dr. Wei also directs a research program that focuses on improving outcomes following cancer surgery. Her work has 2 major themes: clinical trials and quality improvement. Her current research projects include the: building of a provincial registry of HPB surgical disease; leading multicentre clinical trials in the treatment of pancreatic cancer; and the developing innovative quality improvement strategies that improve high quality outcomes following cancer surgery..

Dr. Wei holds major leadership roles at the provincial and national level. She is the Lead for Quality and Knowledge Transfer for the Surgical Oncology Program at Cancer Care Ontario. This is the provincial organization that oversees delivery of cancer services in Ontario. In addition she serves as the Vice-President of the Ontario Association of General Surgeons and the Secretary of the General Surgery Section, Ontario Medical Association.

She is an affiliate scientist at the Toronto General Research Institute and is appointed as an Associate Professor of Surgery in the Departments of Surgery & the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation. She is an active Scientist at the Zane Cohen Digestive Diseases Clinical Research Centre, Mount Sinai Hospital and a member of the Ontario Cancer Institutes, Clinical Research Unit.

 

Alison Urton is the Group Administrator at the Canadian Cancer Trials Group and has been with the group since 2003. As the Group Administrator, Alison is responsible for providing administrative leadership and direction for the Group’s operations, both internally at Queen’s University and in the broader national and international clinical trials communities. Alison facilitates the development and implementation of the of the Group’s strategic direction as a key resource for the Director. This includes aligning compliance and trial conduct aspects with applicable regulations, guidelines, and standard operating procedures.

 

Andrew Robinson is a graduate of the University of Manitoba Medical School, and completed residency training in Internal Medicine and Medical Oncology at the University of British Columbia (2005). He has completed a Masters in Biotechnology from Johns Hopkins University. He worked as a clinical oncologist at the Northeastern Ontario Regional Cancer Centre, and subsequently has worked at the Cancer Center of Southeastern Ontario where he is affiliated with Queen’s University, Kingston ON. He is the disease site lead for breast cancer, a member of the Provincial Lung Disease Site Group, local PI for many studies, and co-director of the oncology clinical trials unit. His research interests include population based data on bladder cancer outcomes, lung cancer patterns of practice, and breast cancer and lung cancer clinical trials.

 

Bryn Fisher is the Manager of the Office of Compliance and Oversight (OCO). OCO is responsible for the oversight of the following activities: regulatory submissions to and communication with Health Canada; ethics review of study participant informed consents and ethics approval documentation from research ethics boards; processing and tracking safety information; on-site monitoring activities; support with audit activities.

Bryn's background includes roles as a Study Coordinator in the Canadian Cancer Trials Group's Investigational New Drug Program, as the Interim Co-Manager of the former Ethics/Regulatory Office, and as the Safety Desk Team Leader within the OCO. Bryn understands the regulatory environment along with associated regulations, guidelines and standard operating procedures and has experience interacting with regulatory agencies, research ethics boards and pharma with respect to matters under her purview.

 

Chris O'Callaghan received his Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine and MSc and PhD degrees from the University of Guelph. He became a Senior Investigator with the Canadian Cancer Trials Group in 2001 and oversees the Gastrointestinal and Brain Site Committees. He is also a Professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences at Queen’s University. His research interests are diverse and include clinical trials design and methodology and infectious disease epidemiology.

 

Clive Hansen is the Audit Team Leader at Canadian Cancer Trials Group and has been with the group since 2005. As Audit Team Leader Clive is responsible for coordinating and implementing audits of external participating clinical sites, external vendors, and of internal processes to ensure compliance with applicable guidelines, regulations, standards, and contractual requirements. Additionally, the Audit Team Leader is the point of contact for inspections and audits by external parties of Canadian Cancer Trials Group and its member centres and coordinates Canadian Cancer Trials Group responsibilities relating to the review.

 

Dr. Tu is a Senior Biostatistician in the Canadian Cancer Trials Group with appointments in both the Departments of Community Health & Epidemiology, and Mathematics & Statistics. He came to Queen's in 1996 from the Therapeutic Products Directorate of Health Canada. His primary responsibilities are the design, management and analysis of the cancer clinical trials. He is also interested in the methodological research on the development and evaluation of statistical procedures for the design and analysis of cancer clinical trials and maintains an interest in the general mathematical theory of statistics.

 

Gary M. Clark, PhD is Vice President of Biostatistics & Data Management at Array BioPharma, Inc. in Boulder, Colorado. He is actively involved in the development of targeted therapies for various cancers. His areas of expertise and interest include the identification and evaluation of prognostic and predictive biomarkers for breast cancer, lung cancer, pancreatic cancer and other solid tumors. Prior to joining Array BioPharma in 2008, he was Vice President of Biostatistics & Data Management at OSI Pharmaceuticals, Inc. in Boulder, Colorado where he helped develop and was instrumental in the regulatory approval of a small molecule inhibitor of EGFR tyrosine kinase. Prior to joining OSI Pharmaceuticals in 2002, he served at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas (1999-2002) as Professor of Medicine and Associate Director of the Breast Center, Director of Tissue Resources and Director of Informatics, and at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Texas (1980-1999) where he was Professor of Medicine in the Division of Medical Oncology and Director of the Biostatistics, Data Management & Data Processing Shared Resource of the San Antonio Cancer Institute. He was co-director of the ASCO/AACR Workshop on Methods in Clinical Cancer Research in Vail, Colorado from 1996 to 2000; co-director of the FECS/AACR/ASCO Workshop on Methods in Clinical Research in Flims, Switzerland from 1999 to 2005; faculty member of the Australia and Asia Pacific Clinical Oncology Research Development Workshop (ACORD) since 2008 and a member of the Executive and Steering Committees since 2012.

 

Associate Professor, Dept. of Pathology and Molecular Medicine, Queen's University
Service Chief, Laboratory Genetics, Kingston General Hospital
Dr. Feilotter is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine at Queen’s University, where she maintains an active research program dedicated to biomarker discovery and validation in a variety of human diseases. She also oversees the genomic and proteomic laboratory operations of Indoc Research, a not for profit service provider of laboratory and informatics services with a special interest in the integration of platforms designed to support large-scale studies of human DNA, RNA and proteins. In her role as Service Chief of Kingston General Hospital Laboratory Genetics, she also oversees the clinical genetics program. This combination of job responsibilities allows her to focus on methods to bridge the gap between research and clinical application of biomarker findings.

 

Dr. John Bartlett is pursuing an integrated platform of research focused on the development of novel cancer diagnostics. In 2011, Dr. Bartlett became director of OICR’s Transformative Pathology Platform and the Ontario Tumour Bank. He is developing new diagnostic approaches to improve patient diagnosis and treatment. By gaining an understanding of the molecular complexity of cancer, accurate diagnostic approaches can be developed to ensure that patients receive the most appropriate treatment. Novel diagnostic tools are required to accurately identify molecular subtypes of cancer and to predict the effectiveness of treatment. Dr. Bartlett has contributed to the development of translational research within multi-centre clinical trials, several of which have led to new insights into selecting appropriate therapeutics for breast cancer patients. He aims to foster research in other laboratories across the province to accelerate the discovery of novel diagnostics for cancer.

 

Keyue Ding is a senior biostatistician of Canadian Cancer Trials Group, and an associate professor of Dept. of Public health Sciences at Queen’s University. He obtained his Ph.D. in statistics from University of Alberta in 2009. His research interests include statistical issues in design and analysis of clinical trials, have been serving as statistician for Canadian Cancer Trials Group Lung, Genito-urinary, and Brain cancer disease sites for over 14 years, had a long standing interest in Prognostic and Predictive Biomarkers modeling and high-throughput data Analysis, health economic analysis along the cancer clinical trials; and research in Sequential analysis and Statistical Computing.

 

Dr. Natasha Leighl is a medical oncologist at the Princess Margaret Hospital, Toronto, Canada, and Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.

After receiving her MD from the University of Toronto, Dr Leighl completed residencies in internal medicine at the University of Calgary and in medical oncology at the University of Toronto. She subsequently completed a Fellowship in Thoracic Oncology with Dr Frances Shepherd at the Princess Margaret Hospital, a Fellowship in Clinical Oncology with Professor Martin Tattersall at the University of Sydney, Australia, and received her MMSc in Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Newcastle, Australia.

Dr Leighl’s main interest is in developing new treatments in lung cancer. She is a member of the Lung Disease Site Executive and co-chairs the Committee on Economic Analysis in the Canadian Cancer Trials Group. Dr Leighl is currently Web Editor of the Journal of Thoracic Oncology, Section Co-Editor of The Oncologist and Current Oncology and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Clinical Oncology. She has served on several committees including as Lung Track Leader for the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Cancer Education Committee, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada Medical Oncology Examination Board and the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) Career Development and Continuing Education Committees. She is currently President of Lung Cancer Canada and has recently been awarded the OSI Pharmaceuticals Foundation Chair in Cancer New Drug Development at the University Health Network, University of Toronto.

 

Dr. Bradbury is a medical oncologist at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, University of Toronto, and adjunct Associate Professor within the Department of Oncology at Queen’s University, and holds a Cancer Care Ontario Research Chair in Experimental Therapeutics. She is a graduate of Cardiff University Medical School, UK. She undertook specialist medical oncology training at the MidCentral Regional Cancer Treatment Service in New Zealand, and at the Cancer Research UK Medical Oncology Department, Churchill Hospital, Oxford, UK, obtaining the FRACP in 2005. She undertook fellowship training in Thoracic Oncology at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Toronto, and a one year Drug Development Fellowship with the Canadian Cancer Trials Group, as part of The Terry Fox Foundation Training Program in Transdisciplinary Cancer Research at Canadian Institutes of Health Research. She worked as a senior investigator for the thoracic oncology disease site, and investigational new drugs program within the Canadian Cancer Trials Group from 2010-2014 gaining experience in the conduct of phase I-III National and International clinical trials. She is currently working as a staff physician at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in lung and sarcoma, She has a research interest in the evaluation of new therapies for the management of thoracic malignancies and clinical trial methodology.

 

Professor and Senior Investigator, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Department of Pediatrics, University of Montreal
Principal Investigator, The Ontario Health Study and the Cartagene Project
Director of the Genome Canada Canadian Data Integration Centre
Dr. Philip Awadalla is a Professor at the University of Montreal, Ste Justine Hospital Research Centre, Department of Pediatrics and Senior Investigator at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research. He obtained his doctorate in population and statistical genetics from the University of Edinburgh and was awarded NSERC and Killam Postdoctoral fellowships to attend the University of British Columbia and was then awarded a Wellcome Trust Fellowship (UK) to pursue his research at the University of California Davis before moving to the University of Montreal. His research utilizes population and integrative genomics approaches to capturing genetic and environmental factors associated with a number of hematological, oncological, and infectious diseases including malaria. Since 2009, he has been the lead Principal Investigator and Scientific Director of the CARTaGENE program and is now the PI of the Ontario Health Study. Dr. Awadalla is a teaching faculty at a international institutions including the NIH-funded U. of Washington Institute of Statistical Genetics and sits on the advisory board of a number of international companies and Genome Centres. His team is currently part of the analytical and functional analysis groups of the 1000 Genomes Program, the International Cancer Genome Consortium, and have also been developing computational tools that have been used in this program as well as programs like the HapMap project. Ongoing projects include next-generation programs to study the role of genetic variants responsible for neurological, hematological and cancers, particularly in children; determining rates of mutations and recombination in human pedigrees; model-based approaches to identify genetic and environmental control points to malaria infection and sickle cell disease in Africa; genetic and environmental factors associated with cardiovascular traits in Canada. Dr. Awadalla is the recipient of a Sigma Xi faculty award and the 2012 Canadian Society for Clinical Investigation’s Joe Doupe Young Investigator Award.

 

Shakeel Virk holds the position of Pathology Coordinator for the Canadian Cancer Trials Group and manages activities for the Queen’s Laboratory for Molecular Pathology (QLMP). As Pathology Coordinator he has overseen tissue banking activities since 2003 for over 100 clinical trials for the Canadian Cancer Trials Group Tumour Tissue Data Repository (TTDR). In 2005 he helped initiate the creation Queen’s Laboratory for Molecular Pathology (QLMP). The QLMP has provided IHC, IF, TMA construction, Electron Microscopy, Digital Pathology and much more for hundreds of research projects. In 2009 he created the Queen’s Virtual Microscopy Library (QVML) and the Virtual Plastination Library (VPL).

 

Wendy Parulekar is a graduate of the University of Ottawa Medical School where she also completed residency training in Internal Medicine and Medical Oncology (1996). This was followed by a fellowship in Clinical Pharmacology at the Toronto Sunnybrook Regional Cancer Centre. Since 1999, she has held a joint clinical/research position at Queen’s University. Within the Canadian Cancer Trials Group, she acts as Physician Coordinator for national and international studies in carcinoma of the breast, head and neck and genitourinary systems and is Chair of the Education Committee. In addition to her involvement in national and international scientific advisory committees, she is an active participant in the SPIRIT initiative whose goal is to define standard protocol items for randomized trials and is an associate editor for the journal Clinical Trials. In 2011, she was named a Fellow of the Society for Clinical Trials.
Her academic interests include the methodology of efficient clinical trial design and conduct from a non-statistician’s perspective and the art and science of mentoring in academic medicine.