Sarah Berger Richardson is President of the Canadian Association of Food Law and Policy and a member of the Law Society of Ontario. Her research focuses on the regulation of the agri-food sector, with a particular emphasis on farmed animals and the meat processing industry. Previously, she served as a law clerk at the Supreme Court of Israel and the Canada Agricultural Review Tribunal.

A lawyer and social worker by training, Professor Chen’s research program examines laws and policies at the intersection of health and international migration, particularly the mechanics of health inequities facing noncitizens and racialized minorities. His published work has addressed such topics as health rights litigation, migrant and refugee health, social determinants of health, health care solidarity, and medical tourism. Besides his scholarly pursuits, Professor Chen engages in a variety of community-based work and pro bono legal services. He has served as a member of the board of directors for several non-profit organizations, including the HIV Legal Network, the Community Alliance for Accessible Treatment, and the Canadian Centre on Statelessness.

The pace of societal change is accelerating. Pandemics, artificial intelligence, space exploration, climate change, political upheavals, anomalous sightings, and even the new ways in which we communicate with each other are all contributing to an ever more confusing and frantic world. As a global health epidemiologist and science communicator, Professor Deonandan sees his role as bringing measurement and critical appraisal to whatever evidence exists to help us navigate this thickening soup of competing influences. Much of his scholastic output involves the epidemiology of reproductive technologies and the ethics of global health interventions, as well digital technologies in health care and the creative use of administrative data to answer questions surrounding population health. A significant portion of Professor Deonandan’s global health work has been conducted in the interior of Guyana, where he has worked to both measure and mitigate the health challenges experienced by remote Indigenous peoples. During the COVID pandemic, Professor Deonandan focused solely on communicating infection risk and vaccine science to the general public, assessing the potency of mitigation strategies, charting the trajectory of the epidemic, and weighing the changing evidence to advise on pandemic response policies. Professor Deonandan is also examining how artificial intelligence can improve pedagogy, with specific focus on using large language models to improve writing skills among health science students. His larger vision is to reimagine the wider role of the university in society in the face of rapid technological change.

Patrick Fafard has enjoyed a lengthy career that spans both government and academe. While with the Government of Canada he served as a Director General in the Intergovernmental Affairs Secretariat of the Privy Council Office. Earlier, he served in multiple capacities with three provincial governments, including as Executive Director of the Saskatchewan Commission on Medicare (2000-2001), and Executive Director, Policy and Planning, Saskatchewan Department of Health. Patrick’s academic interests are wide-ranging, including health, trade, and environmental policies, federalism and intergovernmental relations in Canada, the role of senior public health leaders in Commonwealth countries, global health governance to address the challenge of antimicrobial resistance, the governance of organ donation and transplantation, and developing public health political science.

CHLPE's inaugural Director from 2015–2023, Colleen M. Flood is recognized as one of Canada’s leading scholars in the area of health law and policy, and is an accomplished leader, author, and commentator. She has made a significant impact on the policies and areas of research informing health services and care delivery sectors and public health, both in Canada and around the world. Her comparative research has been incorporated into national and global debates over privatization, health system design, accountability, and governance, pandemic preparedness and response and the role of courts in defending rights in health care. Her latest work focuses on the governance of health-related artificial intelligence.

Michelle Giroux's research focuses on end-of-life care as well as filiation and the definition of the family. She works on topics related to assisted reproduction, including the fundamental right to know one’s origins and motherhood for others. She is interested in multidisciplinary approaches to analyzing law.

Vanessa Gruben is a professor in the Common Law Section of the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law and Director of CHLPE. A recognized expert in Canadian health law and policy, her scholarship probes the law and ethics of assisted reproduction, harm reduction, organ donation and transplantation, and health care professional self-regulation. She is the co-editor of the 5th edition of Canada’s leading health law text, Canadian Health Law and Policy (LexisNexis, 2017), and co-author of Families and the Law in Canada: Cases and Commentary (Captus, 2019). She has been a member of the Health Professions Appeal and Review Board and the Health Services Appeal and Review Board. She currently serves as board member of the Canadian Health Coalition and of AMS Healthcare. She has appeared on behalf of Amnesty International Canada before the Supreme Court of Canada in Charkaoui v. Canada, [2007] 1 S.C.R. 350; Charkaoui v. Canada, [2008] 2 S.C.R. 326; Khadr v. Canada, [2010] SCC 3; and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. Professor Gruben is a graduate of the University of Ottawa’s Common Law program. She clerked for Chief Justice Richard of the Federal Court of Appeal and then Justice Bastarache of the Supreme Court of Canada. She was called to the bar in Ontario in 2003, after which she practiced as an associate in the litigation group of a national law firm. She joined the Faculty of Law after graduating as a James Kent Scholar from Columbia University’s Master of Laws program.

Bridging the fields of international law, health law and human rights, Roojin's current research program examines normative interpretation and change in global health law. Her mixed methods and collaborative approach to research has led to the convening of several international conferences as well as publications across a range of venues, including in journals of public health and medicine, law and social science reviews, commissioned reports, foundational law textbooks, and public news and media outlets.

Adam R. Houston is a Canadian health & human rights advocate, specializing in access to medicines and the role of law in the response to infectious disease. He has worked with organizations across Canada and around the world on a wide range of issues, including global COVID-19 vaccine (in)equity, reconciling disparate human rights approaches towards HIV and tuberculosis, and United Nations accountability for the Haitian cholera epidemic. By day, he is the Medical Policy & Advocacy Advisor for Médecins sans frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) Canada.

I am a political scientist who is interested in health politics and health policy. I have specific interests in how citizens can affect health policy issues. I am especially interested in illnesses that affect marginalized communities, such as HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C. I am currently completing a SSHRC-funded project on “contested illnesses”, including autism and Multiple Chemical Sensitivities. My non-health related interests include methods of citizen engagement and citizen participation, the role of the voluntary sector, and the influence of interest groups and social movements.

Professor J. Craig Phillips engages in scholarship and service through the lens of human rights and decolonization, which informs his community-engaged approach to research. He is an expert in curriculum development and was senior co-chair of undergraduate curriculum renewal at the School of Nursing. He co-led an evidence-informed curriculum renewal that was designed to maximize the engagement of students, faculty members, and community partners. This work resulted in the creation of the Ottawa Model for Curriculum Development, which included a systematic review of curriculum revision literature and logic model development. Professor Phillips is also co-director of the International Nursing Network for HIV Research and an investigator at the Centre for Research on Health and Nursing, a partnership between the University of Ottawa and the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA). His research focuses on the ecosocial context of health as a human right: he has documented social factors influencing health outcomes among marginalized populations, primarily persons living with HIV in Botswana, Canada, Nigeria, and the United States. He has over two decades’ experience as a nurse or nurse practitioner working with persons living with HIV and/or mental illnesses in the United States and Canada.

Dr. Monique Potvin Kent is a multi-disciplinary applied public health researcher who focuses on the prevention of obesity and other chronic diseases by examining food and nutrition policies and the commercial determinants of health. Dr. Potvin Kent is an expert in food and beverage marketing targeted at children and adolescents, the healthfulness of this marketing, and whether current policies are protecting children on various media channels such as on television and in digital media, and in child settings such as schools. She also has a clinical background in eating disorders and cognitive behavioural therapy.

Christopher Sun is an Assistant Professor the University of Ottawa Telfer School of Management and a Scientist at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. His 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. He has conducted his research in collaboration with multiple health institutes including Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston, USA), Boston Emergency Medical Services (Boston, USA), Israel National Emergency Medical Services (Magen David Adom; Israel), St. Michael’s Hospital (Toronto, Canada), and Gentofte Hospital (Copenhagen, Denmark). He received his BASc in Engineering Science (Biomedical Engineering) and PhD in Industrial Engineering from the University of Toronto. He was also a Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management.

João Velloso teaches sentencing and “sanctioning”, legal research methods, criminology and socio-legal studies. He has a multidisciplinary background in law, criminology, sociology, anthropology and communication. He works in the areas of criminal law and sentencing, critical criminology and socio-legal studies, more particularly sociology and anthropology of law. His empirical research deals with the penalization of protesters and migrants (deportation and detention), access to justice in detention, and the regulation of cannabis. He is particularly interested in the governance of security through the use of administrative law and the deterioration of rights resulting from these penal configurations which operate alternatively and in addition to criminal justice.

Dr. Kumanan Wilson is a specialist in General Internal Medicine at The Ottawa Hospital; Chief Executive Officer/Chief Scientific Officer, Bruyère Research Institute; Vice President Research & Academic, Bruyère Continuing Care; Chief Scientific Officer, CANImmunize Inc.; and Faculty of Medicine Clinical Research Chair in Digital Health Innovation, University of Ottawa. He is the co-founder of CANImmunize Inc., a science-based technology company spun out from The Ottawa Hospital in 2019. To help Canadians keep track of their vaccinations, the team developed CANImmunize, a pan-Canadian digital immunization tracking system available as a mobile app and through a web portal. Dr. Wilson’s research focuses on digital health, immunization, pandemic preparedness and public health policy and innovation. His research on immunization has explored social media’s impact on vaccine hesitancy, evaluation of vaccine safety using health services data and vaccine policy, including advocating for vaccine injury compensation. Other research interests include blood safety and newborn screening, health ethics, law and policy.

Dr. Michael C. Wolfson was awarded a Canada Research Chair in Population Health Modelling / Populomics in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa in 2010. He formerly held the position of Assistant Chief Statistician, Analysis and Development, at Statistics Canada. Dr. Wolfson holds a BSc in mathematics, computer science and economics from the University of Toronto, and a PhD from Cambridge University. His areas of expertise include program review and evaluation, tax/transfer policy, pension policy, income distribution, design of health information systems, microsimulation modelling of socio-economic policy and health dynamics, and analysis of the determinants of health. He has authored numerous articles addressing topics such as assessing the inter-generational equity of Canada’s pension and health care systems, the design of an appropriate system of health statistics, modelling disease determinants and treatments, income inequality and polarization trends, and income and income inequality as determinants of population health.

Marco Zenone is an assistant professor of health science communication at the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Ottawa. He completed his Ph.D. in public health and policy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London. He then completed his postdoctoral training as a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia.

Marco's research group studies the spread, impact, and political economy of health misinformation and disinformation, examining how patients and the public are misled about treatments, disease causes, and health risks, and how health topics are portrayed across digital platforms. It focuses on the commercial determinants of health, including how profit-driven systems and platform structures amplify misleading or harmful content. It emphasizes moving away from blaming individuals and toward creating accountable systems that prevent, mitigate, and respond to disinformation.