Our Team

Lysanne Lessard, PhD | Core member: Co-Lead

Associate Professor, Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa

Professor Lessard’s research aims at improving how we design digitally enabled services like telehealth so that they can better address human needs.

Her research program focuses on three key aspects of the design of digitally enabled services: the need for improved models and modeling techniques supporting the analysis and design of these systems; the need to articulate their sociotechnical architectures; and the need to anchor the design of the information and communication technologies (ICTs) embedded in these systems both in relevant theories and in a deep understanding of multiple stakeholder needs. Professor Lessard is a member of the LIFE Institute and of the Institut du Savoir Montfort.

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Umar Ruhi, PhD | Collaborator

Associate Professor, Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa

Professor Ruhi’s research interests lie at the intersection of Information Systems and Knowledge Management, and his research programs are concerned with exploring contemporary information and communication technologies (ICTs) and their applications in human, organizational, and social contexts.

As a researcher in the area of consumer health informatics, his research focuses on promoting health and wellness of patients and caregivers through the use of technologies that enable informed decision-making. His past and current research projects pertain to the design and adoption of personal health records and patient portals; health literacy and digital information-seeking behaviours; tools for countering online health misinformation and disinformation; and the use of gamification in medical education.

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Daniel Amyot, PhD | Collaborator

Full Professor, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Ottawa

Professor Amyot’s research interests span many domains, from requirements/software engineering to modelling (goals and business processes), regulatory compliance, healthcare informatics, and smart contracts. He is a member of OIQ (professional engineer) and Senior Member of IEEE.

His research interests include software engineering, requirements engineering, healthcare informatics, business process modelling and mining, regulatory compliance, and smart contracts. He is particularly interested in new ways of doing requirements engineering and process mining in a healthcare context, and in improving different aspects of healthcare services and delivery through technology and applications. He also led the standardization of the User Requirements Notation at the International Telecommunication Union and is now heavily invested in the development of Symboleo, a language for specifying, verifying, and monitoring (smart) legal contracts. He was general chair of the Requirements Engineering conference in 2015 and program co-chair in 2018, and he co-organizes the annual workshop on Requirements Engineering Well-Being, Aging, and Health (REWBAH). He is on the editorial boards of SoSym and REJ, and is also a member of the LIFE Research Institute and of the Institut du Savoir Montfort.

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Antoine Sauré, PhD | Core member: Co-Lead

Assistant Professor, Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa

Professor Sauré’s research interests include advanced modelling and decision-making under uncertainty and their applications to large-scale problems in service operations. In particular, the study of resource allocation problems in health care and other areas. From a methodological point of view, his research focuses on the development of advanced analytics techniques for dynamic resource allocation problems.

Professor Sauré has over twelve years of experience developing, implementing and applying advanced analytics techniques to large-scale, real-world business problems in several industries. He is an expert in the development of advanced capacity planning and scheduling techniques and has worked with the British Columbia Cancer Agency on numerous patient scheduling projects, as well as other projects aimed to provide timely access to quality cancer care.

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Wojtek Michalowski, PhD | Core member

Full Professor, Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa

Professor Michalowski is a founding member of the MET Research Laboratory at the University of Ottawa, and co-lead of the Telfer Health Transformation Exchange (THTex). He is a recognized expert in computer-interpretable clinical practice guidelines, decision analysis and medical decision making, clinical decision support systems, and computer modeling of interdisciplinary healthcare teams.

During the 1997/98 academic year, he was the Senior Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria. In 2013, the President of the Republic of Poland granted Professor Michalowski the state title of Professor in recognition of his outstanding research accomplishments. This honour, the highest distinction given to researchers in Poland, comes at the recommendation of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is also Adjunct Research Professor at the Sprott School of Business, Carleton University.

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Christopher Sun, PhD | Collaborator

Assistant Professor, Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa

Professor Sun’s research interests lie at the intersection of optimization, artificial intelligence, public health, and health equity. His research primarily revolves around utilizing data-driven optimization, machine learning, and simulation techniques to inform the design of healthcare systems and development of public health policies.

Professor Sun has published in leading journals, including the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Circulation, Health Affairs, and Journal of the American Medical Directors Association. He is a recipient of a CIHR Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship and an American Heart Association Young Investigator Award as well as has been named to the Citizen CPR Foundation’s 40 Under 40 List (Class of 2021). He is also a scientist at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute.

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Herna Viktor, PhD | Collaborator

Full Professor, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering, University of Ottawa

Professor Herna Viktor’s research interests include the creation of life-long machine-learning algorithms to extract meaning from sequential and temporal data. In particular, her research focuses on ensuring fairness-aware algorithms and designing interpretable models during the machine-learning process.

Professor Viktor has over twenty years of experience in designing, implementing, and applying machine learning solutions in numerous and diverse domains, including the study of pediatric anemia patients in collaboration with the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto; developing intelligent solutions for protein binding prediction and drug design; the creation of fairness-aware models for mortgage applications; and a study of content-based detection of online influence campaigns. Her work has received numerous recognitions and awards.

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Michael Fung-Kee-Fung, MBBS, FRCSC, MBA | Member

Medical Director Champlain Regional Cancer Program, The Ottawa Hospital and Full Professor and Head of Surgical Oncology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa

Dr. Fung-Kee-Fung is Professor at the Departments of Obstetrics/Gynecology and Surgery at the Faculty of Medecine, University of Ottawa. He is also co-founder and co-lead of the Telfer Health Transformation Exchange (THTex)

Dr. Fung-Kee-Fung has a passionate interest in health systems transformation, learning health systems and the role of collaborative methodologies in health innovation including research. He has pioneered the introduction of a Communities of Practice model in health care as a platform for engagement and innovation to support knowledge transfer and systems performance improvements both at the regional, provincial and national levels in clinical areas of cancer care and with WSIB for First Responder access. Together with the Ottawa team they are currently implementing a population care Learning Health Systems model for cancer care.
Clinically his interest lies in cancer therapeutics and robotic surgery. He is past co-lead of the Canadian Cancer Trials Group (CCTG) in gynecology. He has held several leadership positions in Gynecologic Oncology both nationally and provincially including President of the Society of Gynecology Oncology of Canada of which he is currently the Society’s Chief Strategy Officer.

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Dre Donna E. Maziak, MDCM, M.Sc., FRCSC, FACS | Collaborator

President of the Canadian Association of Thoracic Surgeons and the Ontario Association of Thoracic Surgeons and Full Professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa

Dr. Donna E. Maziak is a Full Professor at the University of Ottawa and is active in the Division of Thoracic Surgery, with a previous cross appointment to the Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine and now as Adjunct Professor at the Telfer School of Management.

Dr. Maziak graduated from McGill University, receiving a Doctorate in Medicine in 1987. She then undertook postgraduate training in Surgery at the University of Toronto, first in General Surgery for five years and then in Thoracic Surgery for two years receiving certification in these two specialties at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (RCPSC). The following two years were spent in Clinical Epidemiology at McMaster University, thus obtaining her master’s degree, and as a Clinical Assistant in Thoracic Surgery at Toronto General Hospital. She then was recruited by The Ottawa Hospital (TOH), where she is currently Full Professor and Director of the Communities of Practice for Lung and Esophageal/gastric in the Champlain LHIN, as well as surgical lead for Cancer Transformation and Lung Cancer Screening at TOH. She is currently the Thoracic Lead at Ontario Health Network.

Dr. Maziak has a strong interest in clinical trials science, having obtained her master’s in clinical Epidemiology at McMaster University. She has pursued this interest in Ottawa with multicenter randomized trials at a national and international level, with CIHR grants to support her work. Through her involvement with Cancer Care Ontario (CCO), she has participated in and written guidelines for the care of patients with thoracic malignancies that are used to ensure equal care to all patients in Ontario. In addition, she has held positions as Program Director for Thoracic Surgery at the University of Ottawa, Chair of the Thoracic Specialty Committee at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, President of the Canadian Association of Thoracic Surgeons and President of the Ontario Association of Thoracic Surgeons.

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Geneviève Gauthier | Collaborator

Assistant Professor, Department of Innovation in Medical Education, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa

Professor Gauthier has a PhD in cognitive psychology from McGill University and expertise in faculty development and program evaluation. Her research program explores individual and group evaluative practices, modeling of learning interactions, and program evaluation in health education.

Amy Hsu, PhD | Collaborator

Investigator, Bruyère Research Institute

Professor Hsu is a health economist, holds a research chair in dementia research, and performs health services research in the elder and frail population.

Douglas Manuel, MD MSc FRCPC | Collaborator

Professor, Department of Family Medicine, University of Ottawa

Dr. Manuel is a distinguished professor in family medicine, University of Ottawa. Dr. Manuel co-leads the Faculty of Medicine’s artificial intelligence and personal health strategy.

Peter Tanuseputro, MD, MHSc, CCFP, FRCPC | Collaborator

Associate Professor, Division of Palliative Care, Department of Medicine University of Ottawa

Dr. Tanuseputro leads the Centre for Individualized Health. He performs a full range of research for frail and elderly and holds a Clinical Research Chair in Palliative Care and Predictive Analytics.