Faculty and Academic Lead

Dr. Kim Lavoie is co-Director of the MBMC, holds the Canada Research Chair in Behavioural Medicine, and is a researcher in the Health promotion, prevention and management of chronic diseases research axis at CIUSSS du Nord-de-l’île-de-Montréal, Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur de Montréal. She is a Full Professor in the Department of Psychology at UQAM and an Adjunct Professor of Medicine at University of Montreal. She is internationally recognized for her research on the impact of psychological and behavioural factors on the development and progression of chronic diseases, and the impact of behavioural interventions, e.g., motivational communication, exercise, and behavioural weight loss, on key health behaviours and outcomes in chronic diseases. She is also the Chair of the Canadian Network for Health Behaviour Change and Promotion (CAN-Change) Finally, she is an internationally recognized expert in motivational communication; over 20,000 health professionals across Canada, the US, Europe (France, Spain, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Portugal, Italy, Estonia, the UK), India and Australia/New Zealand have attended her professional training workshops. She currently holds multiple grants in the area of motivational communication training and efficacy for behaviour change in chronic disease. Dr. Lavoie is a founding member of the IBTN.

Faculty and Academic Co-Lead

Dr. Simon Bacon is a Full Professor in the Department of Health, Kinesiology, and Applied Physiology at Concordia University, the co-Director of the Montreal Behavioural Medicine Centre, and a researcher in the Health promotion, prevention and management of chronic diseases research axis at CIUSSS du Nord-de-l’île-de-Montréal, Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur de Montréal. He previously was the CIHR SPOR Chair in Innovative, Patient-Oriented, Behavioural Clinical Trials, and FRQS Co-Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Digital Health for Health Behaviour Change. Dr. Bacon has had extensive training in the delivery of behavioural randomised controlled trials and has been a PI and co-I on 14 different studies involving behavioural interventions, including exercise, weight management, stress management, and motivational interviewing. Finally, Dr. Bacon has organised several knowledge translation events, including Café Scientifiques, where he has brought a number of different stakeholders together to discuss key topics and issues, for example, trying to create a common dialogue between researchers and the media to improve health innovation reporting. Dr. Bacon is a founding member of the IBTN.

Group Lead

Marilyn N. Ahun, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at McGill University and Junior Scientist at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre. Dr. Ahun is a mixed-methods researcher with training in developmental psychology (BA Honors, McGill University), public health and health promotion (PhD, Université de Montréal), and global health (Postdoctoral Fellowship, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health). Her research examines the pathways through which parental mental health impacts child development across different sociocultural contexts (e.g., Ghana, Canada). She also works to implement and evaluate interventions to promote mental health across the lifespan.

Group Lead

Dr. Nicole Alberts is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Concordia University in Montreal and holds a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Behavioural Health Intervention. She is a recognized expert in chronic pain and childhood cancer survivorship, with a strong focus on developing and evaluating digital health interventions to improve pain management and psychological outcomes in medical populations. Dr. Alberts’ research program is dedicated to enhancing behavioural health and psychological well-being across the lifespan, particularly among individuals living with catastrophic and chronic illnesses, including childhood cancer. She integrates innovative digital health technologies into her work to address critical research questions and to design, implement, and test scalable interventions targeting pain and related psychological challenges. In addition to her research, Dr. Alberts brings extensive clinical experience in both clinical health psychology and rehabilitation psychology, working with pediatric and adult populations.

Group Lead

Vincent Gosselin Boucher is a Professor in the Department of Physical Activity Sciences at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and Director of the PHARE Lab. His research program focuses on supporting healthcare professionals in the prevention and management of chronic diseases, with the overarching goal of reducing morbidity and premature mortality. Specifically, his work targets three complementary areas: (1) strengthening the psychological and organizational support of healthcare professionals as a key condition for engagement in care relationships, (2) enhancing their capacity to navigate health literacy challenges, misinformation, and disinformation, and (3) developing and evaluating digital tools to assess and strengthen motivational communication competencies in complex and information-rich care environments. His research integrates behavioural science, health promotion, and digital health to design and evaluate scalable interventions that improve both professional well-being and quality of care.

Group Lead

Jen Brown is a Senior Lecturer specialising in the intersection of severe mental illness, physical health co-morbidities (including cancer), and health inequalities. She has a strong methodological interest in co-design and mixed-methods research, ensuring that patient voice drives clinical and service-level innovation.

Faculty and Group Lead

Molly Byrne is a Health Psychologist and Established Professor in the School of Psychology, at the University of Galway, Ireland. She directs the Health Behaviour Change Research Group (HBCRG), which she established in 2014, when she received a Research Leadership Award from the Health Research Board (HRB). The HBCRG is a national hub and internationally-recognised centre of excellence in the development and application of behavioural science to health behavioural intervention development, evaluation and implementation. Molly’s research aims to improve population health by developing, applying and promoting an evidence-based behavioural science approach to health behaviour change interventions. She has published widely in the areas of chronic disease prevention, health behaviour change interventions and implementation science. She seeks close collaboration in her research with practice and policy key stakeholders, and patient and public involvement representatives, to promote implementation and research translation. Molly received a Distinguished Investigator Award from the International Behavioural Trials Network in 2024, recognising her enduring scientific contributions and strategic leadership to the field of behavioural medicine. Website

Faculty and Group Lead

Susan M. Czajkowski, Ph.D. is an expert on psychosocial and behavioral risk factors for disease, with special emphasis on the development and testing of interventions for behavioral risk factors such as obesity, physical inactivity, adverse diets, and non-adherence to medical regimens. In 2024, Dr. Czajkowski retired from her position as Chief of the Health Behaviors Research Branch of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Prior to joining the NCI in 2015, Dr. Czajkowski was a Program Director at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, where she managed research initiatives testing interventions to improve adherence to lifestyle and medical therapies in patient populations, and was Project Officer for the Enhancing Recovery in Coronary Heart Disease (ENRICHD) Patients Study, a multicenter randomized clinical trial to evaluate the effects of treating depression and low social support on survival and recurrent events in myocardial infarction patients. Dr. Czajkowski was also the lead Project Officer for the Obesity Related Behavioral Intervention Trials (ORBIT) Consortium, which supported research at seven sites across the U.S. to translate basic behavioral research findings into obesity-related interventions. As part of the ORBIT consortium, Dr. Czajkowski led the development of the ORBIT model for designing and testing behavioral treatments for chronic diseases. Dr. Czajkowski is a Fellow (Emerita) in the Society of Behavioral Medicine and the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research (ABMR). She served as ABMR President from 2014 – 2015 and is a Founding Member of the International Behavioral Trials Network.

Group Lead

Dr. Alysha Deslippe is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Concordia in the Health for EveryBODY Lab led by Dr. Angela Alberga (Montreal, Canada). Alysha’s research focuses on improving the dietary habits of adolescents and sport-involved individuals, irrespective of their sex and gender. Alysha leverages her expertise in gender theory, mixed-methods research, co-creation and nutrition to develop and test tailored behavioural interventions to this end. In her PhD, Alysha led the development of a high school athlete specific dietary app called PLAYTE where she received numerous awards for her work, including a SSHRC Doctor Fellowship, joint CBITN and Michael Smith Health Research BC Doctoral Fellowship, a Health and Behaviours International Collaborative Award and a University of British Columbia Public Scholars Initiative Award. Alysha is an active retired athlete, community coach and co-officer on the Professionals in Nutrition for Exercise and Sports (PINES) board.]

Faculty and Group Lead

Konstadina Griva is an Associate Professor of Health Psychology and Behavioural Medicine at the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her research focuses on behavioural and implementation science, with a strong emphasis on patient and public involvement (PPI), co-design, and sustainable behaviour change in healthcare. She is a Principal Investigator in mobile health within the ETH Future Health Technologies programme and the Principal Investigator of NTU’s Climate Health Transformation Programme. She also leads the PPI workstream for CREPSing, applying the Collective Reflective Equilibrium in Practice (CREP) methodology to support ethical and inclusive genome medicine implementation. Konstadina has led multiple point-of-care intervention trials that have received international recognition. She is the first MINT-certified Motivational Interviewing trainer in Singapore and serves as an Editor of the International Journal of Behavioral Medicine. She is committed to mentoring early-career researchers and strengthening international behavioural health collaborations.

Faculty

Marta Kersten-Oertel is an Associate Professor at Concordia University and a Junior 2 Research Scholar with the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Santé in Medical Technologies. She is an internationally recognized leader at the intersection of human–computer interaction and medical technologies, advancing the design, validation, and clinical translation of human-centered mHealth and surgical systems. With a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from McGill University, her research spans mixed and augmented reality, computer-assisted surgery, and medical imaging, and is distinguished by deep clinical integration and strong industry collaboration. She has authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications and has led multi-institutional applied research initiatives across neurosurgery, thoracic surgery, and general surgery in Canada and internationally, driving measurable clinical and technological impact. Dr. Kersten-Oertel plays a prominent leadership role in the global medical imaging and computer-assisted intervention community. She has served as an Area Chair for MICCAI since 2017, is a board member of the MICCAI SIG-CHI Working Group, and will serve as Program Chair for MICCAI 2027 in New Zealand. She is also an Associate Editor of the Taylor & Francis journal Computer Assisted Surgery (TCAS) and serves on the Executive Board of the International Society for Computer Assisted Surgery (ISCAS). Through these roles, she actively shapes research directions, evaluation standards, and community building in medical technologies. She additionally serves on the advisory board of YULCOM Technologies, contributing to the growth of Montreal’s innovation ecosystem.

Faculty

Sylvie Lambert, RN, PhD is Associate Professor and Associate Director of Research at the Ingram School of Nursing, McGill University as well as Scientist at the St. Mary’s Research Centre, Montreal. Sylvie is also the recipient of a CIHR Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in self-care and illness self-management support interventions. In this position, the objectives of her research programs includes: 1) developing and evaluating low-cost self-care and illness self-management interventions that are sustainable to enhance translation in practice, 2) implementing real-world patient-reported outcome (PRO) and family-reported outcome (FRO) screening programs, 3) adapting evidence-based self-management interventions to the needs of patients from a culturally and linguistically diverse background and their caregivers, and 4) using advanced psychometric approaches for improving the precision and efficiency of outcome evaluations. One of Dr Lambert’s key study is TEMPO, which stands for a tailored web-based self-management and physical activity program for men with prostate cancer and their caregivers. A pan-Canadian trial of TEMPO was recently funded by CIHR. She is also leading e-IMPAQc, for the electronic implementation of patient-reported outcomes across the cancer continuum in Quebec, which has received more than $2.5M in funding from a number of provincial and national organizations. Sylvie has received national and international recognition of her work in the form of several awards and prizes. More recently she was awarded a prize from the Quebec Cancer Control Program for e-IMPAQc.

Group Lead

Mariantonia Lemos is a psychologist with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and postgraduate training at the master’s and doctoral levels, focused on behavioural science and mental health. She is currently a Distinguished Professor at Universidad EAFIT (Medellín, Colombia) and leads the research group Studies in Psychology and Social Change. Her work sits at the intersection of behavioural medicine, health psychology, and implementation science, with a particular emphasis on behaviour change, habit formation, and the design, cultural adaptation, and evaluation of scalable interventions (including digital health) to improve mental health and prevent non-communicable diseases. She has led and collaborated on international projects partnering with public-sector and healthcare stakeholders to strengthen evidence-informed practice and build capacity for resilient health systems.

Group Lead

Faculty and Group Lead

Dr. Marta Marques is an Assistant Professor at NOVA National School of Public Health, Lisbon, Portugal, Director of the NOVA BE-Change Knowledge Centre, and an associate of the Centre for Behaviour Change, University College London. Her research focuses on advancing the methods for enhancing behaviour change research through the creation, validation, and integration of classification systems like ontologies, and on the development, implementation, and evaluation of theory – and evidence-based behaviour change interventions across a spectrum of health behaviours, populations, and contexts.

Faculty 

Dr. Nicola McCleary is a Scientist in the Child Health Evaluative Sciences Program at SickKids Research Institute and an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto. As an implementation scientist, her work focuses on identifying effective ways to support the uptake of health evidence to improve health outcomes, including implementation of evidence-based practices and de-implementation of ineffective practices. She has led collaborative research projects with clinical colleagues and health system partners focused on a wide range of clinical topics, including improving the provision of asthma self-management support, reducing opioid prescribing in primary care, and reducing over-use of laboratory test-ordering in hospital settings.

Workshop Lead 

Dr. Powell is the Charles J. and Margaret Roberts Professor of Preventive Medicine in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. She is expert in the development of behavioural treatments to improve physical health, and the design and conduct of behavioural randomized clinical trials. She has been a Principal Investigator of six randomized behavioural trials, a P50 center testing multilevel treatments to reduce cardiopulmonary disparities, and the ORBIT Consortium where she co-developed the ORBIT model for developing behavioural treatments. She just completed a multi-site Phase III behavioral efficacy trial to determine if a six-month lifestyle treatment could sustain health benefits in the 18 months after treatment ended. She is core faculty on two NIH training institutes on behavioural treatment development and behavioural clinical trials. Along with co-authors, she published the first book on methods for behavioural clinical trials for chronic diseases.

Group Lead

Dr. Samira A. Rahimi, B.Eng, PhD, is a Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in AI and Advanced Digital Primary Health Care. She is an assistant professor at McGill University, Co-Director of McGill’s Collaborative for AI and Society (McCAIS), and an Associate Academic Member of Mila – Quebec AI Institute. She also serves as Research Co-Director of the General Practice Residency (GPR) program in dentistry at the Jewish General Hospital. With an interdisciplinary background, her research, supported by national and international funding, focuses on developing and implementing advanced digital health technologies—including AI-enabled tools—to improve primary health care. She is particularly committed to improving care for vulnerable and underserved populations, ensuring that innovation benefits everyone. Her work as Principal Investigator has been funded by the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Santé (FRQS), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), Roche Canada, Brocher Foundation (Switzerland), and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2025 Donald A. Henderson Prize for Outstanding Global Health Research and the 2022 Marjorie Bowman and Robert Choplin New Investigator Award, an award that recognizes exceptional contributions by emerging investigators in the field of primary care research.

Group Lead

Dr. Torres is a physician and PhD candidate in Public Health at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, focusing on behavioral and implementation science. Her current research centers on developing and implementing behavioral interventions to improve smoking cessation support among hospitalized patients in Colombia, using behavioral and implementation science frameworks. Her work integrates evidence synthesis, stakeholder engagement, and collaborative approaches to design interventions that are feasible, equitable, and scalable in real-world healthcare settings, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Alongside her academic work, Luz collaborates with international research networks and supports health organizations in translating evidence into practice. She is an alumna of the IBTN Summer School (2024), recipient of the HBIC Award (2023), and serves as administrative lead and group co-lead for the IBTN Summer School 2026. Her interests focus on bridging evidence and practice to strengthen health systems and improve patient outcomes.