ACT-COAG

Noel Chan

Scientist

Noel Chan is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Hematology and Thromboembolism, Department of Medicine, McMaster University, specializing in anticoagulant therapy and thrombosis medicine. His research seeks to improve our understanding of the triggers for thrombosis (including the role of inflammation) and the determinants of variable response to antithrombotic therapies to inform on novel strategies that have the potential to further reduce the burden of thrombosis.

Guillaume Paré

Director, CRLB- GMEL; Senior Scientist

Guillaume Paré is Director of the Clinical Research Laboratory and Biobank (CRLB) – Genetic and Molecular Epidemiology Laboratory (GMEL). He is also Deputy Director of the Thrombosis and Atherosclerosis Research Institute (TaARI), a Professor of Pathology and Molecular Medicine, a Professor in the Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence and Impact, and a University Scholar at McMaster University. He holds the Cisco Professorship in Integrated Health Biosystems.

His clinical interests are centered on lipoprotein disorders, obesity and cardiovascular disease prevention, with research interests in cardiovascular genetics, biomarker development and pharmacogenomics. Gui’s research combines high-throughput biomarker screens with genetics, bioinformatics and epidemiology to identify novel cardio-metabolic biomarkers. He has published more than 200 papers and has been cited over 27,000 times.

A medical biochemist with board certification from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, Gui completed a Master’s in Human Genetics at McGill University under the supervision of renowned geneticist Thomas Hudson. He further trained in genetic epidemiology with Paul Ridker at Harvard Medical School.

John Eikelboom

Senior Scientist

John Eikelboom is Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine, McMaster University, and a haematologist in the Thrombosis Service, Hamilton General Hospital. He originally trained in Internal Medicine and Haematology in Perth, Australia and subsequently moved to Hamilton to take up a Tier II Canada Research Chair in Cardiovascular Medicine.

He has co-authored more than 350 articles in peer-reviewed journals. His current research, supported by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, the Heart and Stroke Foundation and the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, focuses on the efficacy and safety of antithrombotic therapies, outcomes after blood transfusion and bleeding, and the mechanisms of variable response to antiplatelet drugs.

Emilie Belley-Côté

Investigator

Emilie Belley-Côté is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at McMaster University; she practices critical care cardiology in the cardiovascular intensive care unit and coronary care unit at the Hamilton General Hospital. Her research interests include perioperative cardiac surgery care, knowledge synthesis and guideline development. At this stage in her career, she has more than 120 publications, including articles in NEJM, Lancet, JAMA, as well as first-tier critical care journals.

She obtained her MD from Université de Sherbrooke in 2006. After internal medicine and cardiology training, as well as an MSc in Clinical Sciences, she completed a critical care fellowship at McMaster. In 2019, she completed a PhD in Health Research Methodology at McMaster University.

Richard Whitlock

Scientist

Richard Whitlock is Associate Chair, Research, and a Professor at the Department of Surgery, McMaster University. He was awarded the inaugural Canada Research Chair in Cardiovascular Surgery in 2020.

As well as being a PHRI Scientist, Richard is a cardiac surgeon and intensive care physician at Hamilton Health Sciences. His clinical focus is on aortic valve intervention and aortic surgery. He is a lead investigator for the CIHR funded studies SIRS, LAAOS III, and TRICS III, which have established a network of more than 120 centres to address important questions in his field.

He has published more than 90 articles in referred journals. Medically qualified at the University of Toronto, Richard received his specialist training in cardiac surgery and critical care medicine at McMaster University. In 2012, he received his PhD in clinical epidemiology.

Salim Yusuf

Executive Director; Senior Scientist

Salim Yusuf is an internationally renowned cardiologist and epidemiologist, whose work over 40 years has substantially influenced prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease. Born in India, medically qualified at St. John’s Medical College, Bangalore in 1976, he received a Rhodes Scholarship and obtained a DPhil from Oxford, during which he (along with Richard Peto, Rory Collins and Peter Sleight) initiated the concepts of large, simple trials, and meta-analysis. He proposed the concept of combination drug treatment for prevention of CVD to achieve large reductions in CVD with a single pill (now called the polypill concept), but more importantly has been evaluating the concept through large randomized trials.

He leads several global studies involving more than 60 countries in every inhabited continent of the world aimed at enhancing knowledge about the biological, behavioural and societal causes, consequences, and approaches to the control of heart diseases, and strokes through large multi-country programs such as INTERHEART, INTERSTROKE, and PURE.

He holds a Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario Research Chair and has received (among others) the Lifetime Research Achievement award of the Canadian Cardiovascular Society; the Paul Wood Silver Medal of the British Cardiac Society; the European Society of Cardiology gold medal, the clinical Research Prize of the American Heart Association and the International Award and the Braunwald Lecture of the American College of Cardiology. He has been inducted into the Royal Society of Canada and the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame; been appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada, and received the Canada Gairdner Wightman Award in 2014. He has received four honorary doctorates, and is among the top 20 most cited health researchers in history.

Salim Yusuf has published more than 1,000 articles in refereed journals, rising to the second most cited researcher in the world for 2011. He has mentored more than 120 scientists, several of whom are in leadership positions across the globe. He has been President of the World Heart Federation (2015-2016), where he initiated several programs (the Emerging Leaders program, road maps for CVD control and a course for training primary care practitioners in CVD prevention) aimed at halving the CVD burden globally within a generation. The World Heart Federation has recognized his contributions by naming the program the Salim Yusuf Emerging Leaders Programme.

He is a Distinguished University Professor of Medicine, and Executive Director of the Population Health Research Institute, McMaster University and Chief Scientist, Hamilton Health Sciences.