Advisory Committee

Dan Sinai

Committee Chair

Biography: President and CEO at EpiSign-CAN. Dan is an accomplished Innovation Leader with over 37 years of diverse experience across technology, research, and business development sectors.

Wayne Clark

Biography: Dr. Wayne Clark is a member of the AOC and is the ACT Indigenous Peoples Champion. He is an Inuk healthcare leader and early career researcher. Dr. Clark is Executive Director of the Indigenous Health Program at the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Alberta.

Andrea Cowan

Biography: Assistant professor, Department of Medicine, Division of Nephrology at Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry.

Amy Freier

Biography: Dr. Amy Freier (she/her) is a woman, a person with a disability, and an interdisciplinary researcher. She is a Research Associate at the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy and the Inclusion Diversity Equity and Accessibility Lead for Health Data Research Network Canada, Dr. Freier’s research interests include health equity, data equity, data curation, and human rights.

Susan McKenzie

Biography: Since her kidney transplant in 2010, Susan has worked to support kidney patients and living donors, by co-founding and overseeing the Transplant Ambassador Program (www.transplantambassadors.ca), a unique volunteer driven, peer support program which has been helping kidney patients and living donors navigate the transplant journey since 2017. She is also the founder of The Kidney Patient and Donor Alliance Canada (www.KidneyAlliance.ca), a national non-profit which drives patient-led advocacy and research initiatives like the Transplant Ambassador Program (www.TransplantAmbassadors.ca) and many others. Susan is an active patient partner who has contributed to several kidney research projects including the Access to Kidney Transplant (AKT) Strategy in Ontario to increase living kidney donors, a novel kidney screening research pilot, and Can-SOLVE CKD, a CIHR funded national kidney research network.

Srinivas Murthy

Biography: Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia.

Nadia Roumeliotis

Biography: Nadia Roumeliotis, MDCM, PhD, is a pediatric intensivist and clinician-scientist at CHU Sainte-Justine. Her research projects, funded by CIHR (over $700,000) and FRQS (Junior 1), focus on critical care safety systems, including medication and discharge safety. She holds a PhD in Clinical Epidemiology and Health Services from the University of Toronto (2021), during which she acquired expertise in health administrative data sets. She is part of the Canadian Pediatric COVID-19 platform (POPCORN), where she uses administrative data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) to evaluate indirect outcome of the pandemic on youth. She is affiliated with the School of Public Health and the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Montréal, and sits as a specialist on the standing committee for deliberations of the Institut National d'Excellence de la Santé et de la Santé (INESSS).

Amyn Sayani

Biography: Dr. Amyn Sayani is currently the Director, Medical Evidence at AstraZeneca Canada, where he is accountable for all real-world evidence, outcomes research studies, and externally sponsored research across multiple therapy areas. Amyn joined AstraZeneca in March 2021 after 20 years at GlaxoSmithKline and two years at a medical cannabis company as Vice President, R&D. Amyn has served in various roles of increasing responsibility across the drug development and commercialization continuum, including product development, regulatory and medical affairs, health economics and outcomes research, and real-world evidence, and market access. In his role at AstraZeneca, Amyn leads the development and implementation of AstraZeneca’s evidence generation strategy through broad partnerships across public, private and academic stakeholders. He has authored numerous publications and patents and has led numerous projects to optimize patient access to innovative medicines. Amyn is a pharmacist by training, has a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences (Rutgers University, NJ), and a Masters of Science in Health Research Methodology (McMaster University, Ontario).

Kevin Weinfurt

Biography: Kevin P. Weinfurt, PhD, is Professor and Interim Chair in the Department of Population Health Sciences at Duke University Medical Center and a faculty member of the Duke Clinical Research Institute.