
Our Team
An Interdisciplinary Cast of Researchers and Practitioners
We’ve built a world-class team of researchers, trainees and leaders that bring a diverse set of experience and research expertise across multiple disciplines. Our members fall into three key categories of specialization:

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.

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.
His current research interests include enterprise gamification, IT consumerization, enterprise social media strategy, and end-user development.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Herna Viktor, PhD | Collaborator
Full Professor, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering, University of Ottawa

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 and cross-appointed to the Telfer School of Management, 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.

Donna Maziak, MD FRCSC | 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. Maziak is a Full Professor at the University of Ottawa and is active in the Division of Thoracic Surgery, with a cross appointment to the Department of Epidemiology and Community Medicine at the University of Ottawa.
She is the Program Director for Thoracic Surgery at the University of Ottawa and Chair of the Thoracic Specialty Committee at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. She also holds the position of President of the Canadian Association of Thoracic Surgeons and the Ontario Association of Thoracic Surgeons.

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.
Sampath Bemgal, PhD
Post-Doctoral Fellow, RESPECT Learning Health System
Supervisor: Lysanne Lessard, PhD
Cathryn Espadero
MSc in Health Systems
Supervisors: Lysanne Lessard, PhD; Amy Hsu, PhD
Yasaman Gheidar
PhD in Digital Transformation and Innovation
Supervisors: Lysanne Lessard, PhD; Yao Yao, PhD
Sara Mesgari
PhD in Management, Health Systems field
Supervisors: Antoine Sauré, PhD; Jonathan Patrick, PhD
Shahryar Moradi
PhD in Management, Health Systems field
Supervisors: Antoine Sauré, PhD; Jonathan Patrick, PhD
Mohammad Sedighi
Masters in System Science and Engineering
Supervisors: Jonathan Patrick, PhD; Antoine Sauré, PhD