Bringing our vision to life – carving out areas of research expertise
Narinder Paul, MD
Professor, Chair/Chief, Medical Imaging
Dr. Paul joined Schulich Medicine & Dentistry in the summer of 2017. Earning his medical degree in the United Kingdom, Dr. Paul moved to Canada in 2001, and began working at the University Health Network and the University of Toronto. At Schulich Medicine & Dentistry he leads the city-wide imaging team in their clinical, research and academic pursuits.
Dr. Paul’s research is focused on radiation dose reduction and image optimization in cardiothoracic imaging. His inspiration and motivation is drawn from his patients and the need and potential for clinical translation and improved outcomes in patient care. Dr. Paul’s ongoing research interests include the areas of functional/physiological assessment, such as dynamic lung per-fusion, lung deformation and tissue characterization with computed tomography and addressing the unmet needs of patients admitted into the intensive care unit through design and evaluation of a novel, integrated digital tomosynthesis (allows for 3D imaging using X-ray technology that is less invasive or expensive than CT scanning), dual energy and dynamic imaging mobile X-ray device.
Silvia Penuela, PhD
Assistant Professor, Anatomy and Cell Biology
Dr. Penuela came to Schulich Medicine & Dentistry as a postdoctoral fellow working with Dr. Dale Laird. In 2014, she was appointed an assistant professor with Anatomy and Cell Biology. While her background is in plant pathology and molecular genetics, her current research is focusing on the very new field of pannexin channels and their role in diseases such as melanoma.
Pannexin channels are a family of glycoproteins (proteins that have sugar attached to them), that oligomerize to form large pore single membrane channels at the surface of mammalian cells. Their main function is the passage of ions and metabolites for cellular communication. What they have found is that certain pannexins are prominent in diseases such as malignant melanoma and that by blocking the channels with specific pannexin blockers they can revert the cancer cells to a normal cells. This improves cancer properties, reduces tumour formation and metastasis.
Art Poon, PhD
Assistant Professor, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Using a blend of techniques from mathematical modeling, phylogenetics, pattern recognition, open-source software development and high-performance computing, Dr. Poon is designing and implementing new methods to better understand the spread and adaptation of viruses from their genetic sequence variations. Through his work, he is able to determine how a virus has adapted to a patient’s immune system and detect hot spots of transmission of an epidemic in real time, and to reconstruct the historical spread of a virus in human populations. He is working closely with Dr. Eric Arts and studying the evolution of HIV and hepatitis C viruses.
Andrew Pruszynski, PhD
Assistant Professor, Physiology and Pharmacology; Scientist, Robarts Research Institute
Dr. Pruszynski’s research is focusing on motor behaviour and sensory perception and the complex interactions between the mechanical properties of the body and a highly distributed neural circuit. The goal of his research is to explain how the nervous system handles and exploits these interactions when moving and manipulating objects. Addressing this issue under naturalistic conditions is essential to the basic understanding of sensorimotor function and may lead to better treatment following trauma and disease, which often disrupt these interactions. While motor behaviour and sensory perception appear and feel effortless, this can change in an instant because of trauma or disease. The resulting impairments — even minor ones — have major negative consequences on people’s quality of life. Dr. Pruszynski hopes his research will lead to individualized treatment and rehabilitation options, which will hopefully maximize people’s recovery and get them out of the hospital and back into the community where they can get back to doing the things they want to be doing.
Rithwik Ramachandran, PhD
Assistant Professor, Physiology and Pharmacology
Dr. Ramachandran’s research is focused on studying the molecular pharmacology of G Protein Coupled Receptors (GPCR) and Transient Receptor Potential (TRP) ion channels. He uses various techniques to understand cell-signalling responses to GPCR and TRP channel activation at the molecular level and in vivo. His lab’s studies have relevance to various disease including cancer, cardiovascular diseases and inflammatory diseases such as colitis and asthma.
John A. Ronald, PhD
Assistant Professor, Medical Biophysics; Scientist, Robarts Research Institute
A Schulich Medicine & Dentistry alumnus, Dr. Ronald returned to Western University after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University in 2015. Dr. Ronald’s lab is focused on pioneering novel molecular and cellular imaging technologies that aims to meet the personalized and precise medicine and new technology needs that are required today. He has a particular interest on improved early cancer detection, as well as improved monitoring of state-of-the-art gene-based and cell-based therapies for cancer and other diseases. To accomplish this, Dr. Ronald and his team are investigating the development of novel molecular biology platforms that strategically integrate disease-specific activatable expression systems with both biofluid-based and multi-modality imaging readouts. This work is at the interface of molecular and cell biology, imaging sciences, and nanomedicine and requires a multidisciplinary approach to devise innovative solutions to some of today’s most difficult biomedical problems.
Lisa Saksida, PhD
Professor, Physiology and Pharmacology with joint appointment to Psychology; Co-Director, BrainsCAN; Scientist, Robarts Research Institute
With education and training in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, Dr. Saksida has extensive expertise in the neurobiological mechanisms of cognition including memory and perception. Her team is working toward a better understanding of the psychological processes underlying memory and perception through theoreti-cally driven research using healthy subjects and brain- damaged populations.
They use computational models and animal models to investigate the healthy brain and what can go wrong after damage or neurodegeneration. Their goal is to translate the findings to humans and eventually into the clinic.
Now the co-director of BrainsCAN, a research initiative that received $66 million in funding, Dr. Saksida is working to gain more knowledge on neurodevelopmental disorders like autism, dyscalculia, dyslexia and childhood depression to provide better diagnoses and educational tools that improve outcomes for children. Dr. Saksida and the BrainsCAN team will also be addressing disorders of consciousness and of motor control brought on by stroke or neurodegenerative disease; assessing and designing optimized hearing aids that leverage expertise in disorders of hearing; and focusing on cognitive deficits in neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
Shannon L. Sibbald, PhD
Assistant Professor, Family Medicine with cross-appointment to Health Sciences
Dr. Sibbald’s research interests are in the areas of interdisciplinary health and health systems; interprofessional teams
and how high performing health care teams work, and how the current education and training can prepare students for interprofessional work. She also does a significant amount of research focused on implementation science. In this area she is working to understand how different groups, individuals and organizations use knowledge. To do so, she is looking into how teams access, share and store knowledge. She’s also very interested in primary teams that work across the health sector, because the patients they work with are complex and have multi-morbidities so they need to work in several settings. Her research is somewhat unique in that it is looking at a cross-sector approach to team-based care, which is crucial when thinking about patient populations.
