LEAST

Aristeidis Katsanos

Scientist

Aristeidis Katsanos, MD, PhD is a Vascular Neurologist, Assistant Professor at the McMaster University and Investigator at the Population Health Research Institute, Hamilton, ON, Canada. His research focuses on emerging neurosonology applications and the evidence-based evaluation of novel therapies in acute stroke treatment and secondary stroke prevention.

He has published more than 250 papers in high-impact medical journals to date and currently serves as the Co-PI of two phase 2 randomized controlled clinical trials evaluating optimal blood pressure control after endovascular thrombectomy (DETECT; NCT04484350) and the use of colchicine for the prevention of vascular events after an acute intracerebral hemorrhage (CoVasc-ICH; NCT05159219).

He received the Young Investigator Award from the European Stroke Organisation, New Investigator Award from the Heart & Stroke Foundation Canada and the EJ Moran Campbell Award from the Department of Medicine, McMaster University. He serves as an Academic Editor for PLoS One, Associate Editor for Frontiers in Neurology, and Assistant Editor for Stroke. 

Mike Sharma

Senior Scientist

Mike Sharma is Professor of Medicine (Neurology) at McMaster University and a vascular neurologist at Hamilton Health Sciences. He holds the Michael G DeGroote Chair in Stroke Prevention and leads the Brain Health and Stroke Program at PHRI. He is the Medical Director of the Regional Stroke Program at HHS.

After neurology training at Western, a stroke fellowship at the Montreal Neurologic Institute and the University of Ottawa, he completed an MSc in Clinical Epidemiology. He founded the Stroke Program at the University of Ottawa and joined PHRI in 2013. Mike is the Past Chair of the Canadian Stroke Consortium and was the Deputy Director of Clinical Affairs and Policy at the Canadian Stroke Network. He has held leadership positions in trials of novel antithrombotic approaches to stroke prevention and imaging/cognitive outcomes in large trials of stroke prevention. He led the imaging substudies in COMPASS and NAVIGATE ESUS that explored the impact of interventions on covert vascular disease as well as cognitive outcomes. Building on these findings he has been heavily involved with the development of FXIa inhibitors for stroke prevention. He led the multinational Phase II dose ranging AXIOMATIC SSP trial that established a dose of the small molecule FXIa inhibitor milvexian for stroke prevention. He currently leads the pivotal efficacy trial OCEANIC STROKE that seeks to establish the benefit of Asundexian and FXIa inhibition in secondary stroke prevention. In addition to other ongoing research, he and Raed Joundi lead PROSPECT – an international cohort study examining the determinants of cognitive and functional decline in those with a recent stroke.

Ashkan Shoamanesh

Senior Scientist

Ashkan Shoamanesh is an Associate Professor of Medicine (Division of Neurology) and a stroke neurologist at McMaster University, where he holds the Marta and Owen Boris Chair in Stroke Research and Care. He is the founding Director of the Hemorrhagic Stroke Research Program and a Senior Scientist at the Population Health Research Institute.

Shoamanesh’s clinical trials program focuses on advancing treatments and establishing new standards of care to prevent stroke or reduce stroke-related death and disability. He is the principal investigator (PI) or Co-PI of multiple international multicentre randomized trials, including ENRICH-AF (NCT03950076; Lancet 2023), OCEANIC-STROKE (NCT05686070), SATURN-MRI (NCT03936361), CoVasc-ICH 2 (NCT06587737 ), and INTERCEPT (NCT05723926). He has also held central leadership roles in the ANNEXa-I (NEJM 2024), PACIFIC-STROKE (Lancet 2022), and NAVIGATE-ESUS (NEJM 2018) trials. Shoamanesh is the founding Chair of the Canadian Hemorrhagic Stroke Trials Initiative (CoHESIVE), and was the lead author of the first Canadian Stroke Best Practice Recommendations on the Management of Spontaneous Intracerebral Hemorrhage.

Shoamanesh has published over 170 peer-reviewed manuscripts in top-tier scientific journals. He serves on the editorial boards of Stroke, the International Journal of Stroke, and the Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences. He is an active contributor to international scientific meetings and previously co-chaired the World Stroke Congress (World Stroke Organization) and the World Intracranial Hemorrhage Conference.

His research program receives funding from several bodies, including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, National Institutes of Health, Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, Brain Canada, the Australian Government Medical Research Future Fund, and various industry partners. His contributions have been recognized by numerous prestigious national and international accolades from esteemed organizations, such as the American Academy of Neurology (Pessin Award), American Heart/Stroke Association (Globus Award, Siekert Award, Dudley White Award), American Neurological Association (Denny-Brown Award), European Stroke Organization (Young Investigator Award, Scientific Excellence Award), Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada (National New Investigator Award, Barnett Scholarship) and the World Stroke Organization (Future Leaders Program).

Tara McCready

Program Director

Tara McCready, PhD, oversees a variety of collaborative programs at PHRI, and serves as Project Manager for PHRI research studies and registries.

She was recruited to PHRI as a Program Director for the Canadian Network and Centre for Trials Internationally (CANNeCTIN), a national network funded by the CIHR/CFI Clinical Research Initiative program to improve the prevention and treatment of cardiac and vascular diseases and diabetes.

Previously the Executive Director of the Canadian Maternal, Infant, Child and Youth Research Network, Tara holds a PhD in Biochemistry and a MBA in Technology Commercialization from the University of Alberta.

Amanda Taylor

Associate Program Manager

Amanda Taylor is an Associate Program Manager who currently coordinates trials in stroke, and has experience conducting trials in acute coronary syndrome and arrhythmia. Amanda joined PHRI in 2007. She holds a Bachelor of Science Degree (Honours) in Neurobiology from Brock University.

Jodi Miller

Research Project Manager III

Jodi Miller has more than 15 years experience in academic research. She has been at PHRI since 2012 where she has coordinated large international industry and investigator initiated trials. In her current role she coordinates clinical trials and clinical quality assurance projects in stroke.

Jodi has a BSc in Physics from Mount Allison University and a PhD in Medical Biophysics with a focus on magnetic resonance imaging applications from Western University.