Election to fellowship in the academy is considered one of the highest honours for individuals in the Canadian health sciences community. It carries with it a covenant to serve the academy and the future well-being of the health sciences irrespective of the Fellow’s specific discipline.

“I extend myĚýcongratulationsĚýto professors Hoffman and Pillai Riddell,” said 91ŃÇɫ’s Vice-President of Research and InnovationĚýAmir Asif. “These fellowships recognize their outstanding contributions to the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences through leadership, academic performance, scientific creativity and willingness to serve. Their recognition will benefit both 91ŃÇÉ« and Canadian health, and I hope you will join me in congratulating them on this prestigious honour.”

Professor Steven J. Hoffman (Osgoode Hall Law School, Faculty of Health)
Dahdaleh Distinguished Chair
Director, Global Strategy Lab

Professor Hoffman is a world-leading authority on global health law and the global governance of health threats that transcend national borders. He has achieved important scientific breakthroughs and policy impacts by combining law and epidemiology to address challenges faced by the numerous national governments and United Nations agencies that rely on his advice. As a Canadian Institutes of Health Research scientific director, he is a leading voice in public health and champion for integrating research evidence into policy-making processes. Hoffman is a Distinguished Research Chair at 91ŃÇÉ«, director of a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre and frequent contributor to news media.

Professor Rebecca Pillai Riddell (Faculty of Health)
Associate Vice-President Research

Professor Pillai Riddell has focused her research in the pediatric behavioural and biobehavioural sciences. As a professor of psychology and an expert in pain, she has built the first and largest cohort in the world studying young children through painful vaccinations over the first years of life. Pillai Riddell has generated an unrivalled published literature on the biopsychosocial dimensions of infants’ and young children’s acute pain. She is a tireless advocate for equity, diversity, and inclusion and strives to create systemic infrastructure that supports a more just future for patients, their families, health professionals, research trainees and researchers.

To learn more about the fellowships, see theĚýĚý·É±đ˛ú˛őľ±łŮ±đ.

The post Two 91ŃÇÉ« professors appointed Canadian Academy of Health Sciences Fellows appeared first on Research & Innovation.

“The President’s Research Awards recognize the outstanding scholarly contributions that researchers make to their fields,” said 91ŃÇÉ« President and Vice-Chancellor Mamdouh Shoukri. “Not only are Professors Stutchbury and Pillai Riddell exceptional research leaders at 91ŃÇÉ«, but their research is making an impact at national and international levels.”

Bridget Stutchbury

As the recipient of the 2016 President’s Research Excellence Award, Stutchbury has made significant contributions to outstanding research on the ecology, behaviour and conservation of birds. She studies the migratory behaviour of birds through the use of miniature tracking devices that are mounted on the backs of birds and then retrieved a year later after migration. Tracking the start-to-finish migration of individual songbirds for the first time has allowed her to map the complex connections between breeding and wintering sites and to link population declines to climate change, tropical deforestation and potential other threats. She has contributed to over 100 peer-reviewed scholarly publications with more than 5000 citations, including her most notable research paper published in 2009 in the prestigious scientific journal, Science.Ěý

Her scientific and scholarly accomplishments have been acknowledged by a Canada Research Chair Tier 2 in Ecology and Conservation Biology (2002 to 2012). In 2007, her book Silence of the Songbirds, was nominated for a Governor General’s Award in non-fiction and inspired the 2015 award-winning documentary The Messenger.

“I’m very proud that my research has been selected to showcase 91ŃÇɫ’s diverse research culture. My colleagues provide an incredibly supportive and exciting environment in which to take chances and be innovative,” said Stutchbury.

As the recipient of the President’s Emerging Research Leadership Award, Pillai RiddellĚýhas established the first norms for the development of acute pain behaviours in healthy infants, within the context of primary caregivers through her (the Opportunities to Understand Childhood Hurt [OUCH] Lab at 91ŃÇÉ«. Internationally, the OUCH cohort is known to be the largest and most in-depth longitudinal study on healthy infants in pain to date.

Her program of research has been built on millions of dollars on funding from federal and provincial granting agencies. She has contributed to more than 60 peer-reviewed publications, 21 chapters/books, 26 invited talks, 38 peer-reviewed national/international symposia and 138 posters. Her research has attracted stellar graduate students from across the country and all six of her students currently hold Canada Graduate Scholarships from either the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) or the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Among her international accomplishments, she was a clinical research lead on the 2015 Clinical Practice Guidelines for Immunizations published by the Canadian Medical Association Journal with recent endorsements by the World Health Organization. Alongside this research activity, she has also held a number of leadership positions across departmental, faculty, and university committees. This includes her current chairship of 91ŃÇÉ« Senate’s Academic Policy, Planning, and Research Committee.

Rebecca Pillai Riddell

“I am extremely grateful to have been enabled to grow my program of research in such a nurturing environment. I look forward to continuing to support 91ŃÇɫ’s research intensification efforts both at home and abroad, ”said Pillai Riddell.

The 91ŃÇÉ« President’s Research Excellence Award recognizes senior established, full-time, active faculty members at the rank of professor, with distinguished scholarly achievements who have had a notable impact on their field(s) and made a substantial contribution to advancing the University’s international reputation for research excellence while significantly and positively contributing to one or more aspects of the 91ŃÇÉ« community’s intellectual life.

The 91ŃÇÉ« President’s Emerging Research Leadership Award recognizes full-time faculty members within 10 years of their first academic appointment, who have had a notable impact on their field(s) and made a substantial contribution to advancing the University’s international reputation for research excellence while significantly and positively contributing to one or more aspects of the 91ŃÇÉ« community’s intellectual life.

The post Two 91ŃÇÉ« U professors named recipients of the President's Research Awards appeared first on Research & Innovation.

The one-day institute, organized by Echo’s Chair in Women’s Mental Health Research in partnership with the Faculty of Health, will take place Friday, Sept. 27, from 9am to 4pm, at 280N 91ŃÇÉ« Lanes, Keele campus. Lunch will be provided. RSVP to owhchair@yorku.ca by Sept. 13.

The keynote address will be delivered by the inaugural Lillian Wright Maternal-Child Postdoctoral FellowĚýChang Su, looking at the effects of life stress, social support and cultural norms on parenting styles among mainland Chinese, European-Canadian and Chinese-Canadian immigrant mothers.

The day will also feature four researchers in the field of maternal-child health and several student poster presenters, as a chance for students, faculty and community members to share and learn.

Professor Deborah Davidson of the Department of Sociology in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional studies will discuss familial and professional support during pregnancy and early motherhood for women with pre-existing diabetes. She will give a preliminary analysis of a view from the professionals in England and Canada.

Professor Nazilla Khanlou, the Echo Chair in Women’s Mental Health Research and academic lead of the Lillian Wright Maternal-Child Health Scholars Program, of the School of Nursing in the Faculty of Health, will talk about social support for immigrant mothers of children with disabilities.

Professor Tsorng-Yeh Lee of the School of Nursing will examine Chinese women’s experiences with maternity health-care services in Canada.

Professor Rebecca Pillai Riddell of the Department of Psychology will ask the question: Can pain tell us more? She will also look into understanding the relationship between early childhood mental health and parent-child immunization behaviours.

The student presenters include:

• Bramilee Dhayanandhan (PhD candidate);
• Michael Miceli (PhD candidate);
• Jennifer Noseworthy (RN, MScN);
• Monica O’Neill (masters candidate); and
• Nicole Racine (PhD candidate).

For more information, visit the Echo’s Chair in Women’s Mental Health Research website.

The post Lillian Wright Maternal-Child Institute explores research from lab to community appeared first on Research & Innovation.

Pillai Riddell will share her research with the public as one of the featured presenters in a Canadian Institutes of Health ResearchĚý(CIHR) CafĂ© scientifique taking place tonight from 6 to 8pm at the Gladstone Hotel in downtown Toronto. The event, "Ouch! Preventing and Managing Pain in the Real World", is hosted by theĚýCentre of Nursing at The Hospital for Sick Children in collaboration with CIHR.

Right: Rebecca Pillai Riddell

Joining Pillai Riddell in this informal discussion between leading researchers and the public are Anna Taddio,Ěýa professor in theĚýFaculty of Pharmacy at the University of Toronto and aĚýpharmacist at theĚýHospital for Sick Children, andĚýDenise Harrison, chair in Nursing Care of Children, YouthĚý& Families at theĚýChildren’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario and the University of Ottawa. The event will be moderated by Tom Blackwell, senior national reporter forĚýThe National Post.

Pillai Riddell runs 91ŃÇɫ’s Opportunities to Understand Childhood Hurt Laboratory (OUCH Lab) and is an associate scientist in The Hospital for Sick Children’s Department of Psychiatry Research. She has two research programs on the go, both looking at pain in infancy.

Her first, Understanding Chronic Pain in Infancy, is designed to define what chronic pain is in infancy, to establish a baseline that everyone can agree on, because right now there isn’t one, and to develop a measure to assess it. Chronic pain goes beyond acute pain, which is more temporary in nature – heel pricks, regular needles or post-operative – and can have implications on a person’s life into adulthood.

In collaboration with researchers at 91ŃÇÉ«, the University of Toronto, The Hospital for Sick Children as well as Sunnybrook Health Sciences CentreĚýand the Women’s College Hospital, and armed with a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) operating grant, Pillai Riddell is looking at infants in the neonatal intensive care units of hospitals. This is where many premature infants experience ongoing pain as medical procedures are performed. “With that comes an enormous amount of iatrogenically induced pain or pain that is a result of the life-saving treatments.”

The goal is to better understand chronic pain in infants by talking with parents, health professionals and national and international experts, which can then be used to develop a conceptual model of chronic pain in infants, followed by a reliable and valid assessment measure, and finally strategies for infant chronic pain management.

Café scientifiques started in the late 20th century as an informal discussion about scientific subjects. They were never intended to be lectures. The same holds true for CIHR Café scientifiques. They provide insight into health-related issues of popular interest to the general public, and in turn provoke questions and provide answers.

For that reason, the CIHR Café scientifiques are all about accessibility. They involve interaction between the public and experts in a given field at a café, a pub or a restaurant. If you want to take part in a CIHR Café scientifique, there is no need for you to have a science degree. You just need to have a deep-rooted desire to talk about a particular health subject. That way you could learn how health research may provide answers to any questions that are on your mind.

Can't be there in person? Join the group on Facebook.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91ŃÇɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

The post Professor Rebecca Riddell takes infant pain research to CIHR's Café scientifique appeared first on Research & Innovation.