INVICTUS

Stuart Connolly

Senior Scientist

Stuart Connolly is a Professor of Medicine at McMaster University and a cardiac electrophysiologist at Hamilton Health Sciences. He became a faculty member at McMaster University in 1983 and was awarded a full professorship in 1994. He was also appointed as the inaugural holder of the Salim Yusuf Chair in Cardiology at McMaster University.

He has published more than 270 scientific articles in the field, and is currently a member of the editorial boards for a number of prominent cardiology journals, including Heart, the American Heart Journal and the Journal of Pacing and Electrophysiology. His main research interests are focused on the evaluation of treatments for heart rhythm disorders. His academic career has been largely devoted to the design and execution of controlled clinical trials in this area.

He holds a Masters degree from Fordham University, New York, and an MD from McGill University in Montreal. He received his specialist training in cardiology at the University of Toronto and at Stanford University.

Sumathy Rangarajan

Program Director

Sumathy Rangarajan has been Program Director, Global Health, since 2016, preceded by many years’ service at PHRI in other roles. She oversees the PURE study team, as well as the INVICTUS rheumatic AF treatment trial, the CANPWR pediatric weight management registry, and others.

She holds both a Bachelor of Science Degree and a Master of Science degree from Pune University in India.

Gayle Lewis

Associate Program Manager

Gayle Lewis joined PHRI’s Arrhythmia group in 2005 to work on the RE-LY trial; she started up the AVERROES trial in 2007, which she managed until its 2010 close. In 2012, Gayle moved to PHRI’s Global Health program, where she works on various epidemiological studies including PURE, as well as the rheumatic AF treatment study, INVICTUS.

Prior to joining McMaster University, she worked in Toronto at Digital Equipment of Canada for five years and was responsible for the development, testing, implementation and training of the Canadian Automatic Quoting system (AQS) for all Sales Representatives across Canada.

Gayle has been an employee of McMaster University since 1989 when she joined the Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics Group, and remained on campus until 1992, at which time she relocated to the Clinical Trials Methodology Group.

Divya Pattath

Senior Research Coordinator

Divya Pattath has been with the global health research team at PHRI since 2013, and has experience with managing and coordinating large, international clinical trials and registries. She holds a Masters Degree in Industrial Biotechnology and Enterprise from University of Bath, UK and a Bachelors Degree in Science from Christ University, Bangalore, India.

Amy Krol

Senior Research Coordinator

Amy Krol has been employed by the Population Health Research Institute over the last 19 years where she has worked on a number of large, international, industry-sponsored trails. For the past six years, she has focused her efforts on coordinating site management for the INVICTUS study, an investigator-initiated rheumatic AF trial & registry.

She holds a Bachelor of Science Degree (Honours Biology) from Wilfrid Laurier University and a Clinical Research Associate Certificate from McMaster University.