Professor in the Department of Health, Kinesiology, and Applied Physiology at Concordia University, Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research (SPOR) Chair in Innovative, Patient-Oriented, Behavioural Clinical Trials, Co-Director of the Montréal Behavioural Medicine Centre, fellow of the Obesity Society and the Canadian Cardiovascular Society, and researcher at the Centre intégré universitaire de santé et service sociaux du Nord-de-l’Île-de-Montréal (CIUSSS-NIM) and co-lead of the International Behavioural Trials Network.

Co-Director of the Montréal Behavioural Medicine Centre, co-lead of the International Behavioural Trials Network (IBTN) and former Director of the Chronic Disease Research Division at Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur de Montréal. She is a Full Professor in the Department of Psychology and Chair of Behavioural Medicine at the Université du Québec à Montréal. She is also Chair of Health Psychology and Behavioural Medicine at the Canadian Psychological Association and an active member of the CHEP recommendation panel (Adherence Subcommittee). She currently holds a Quebec Health Research (FRQS) Senior Investigator Award.

Dr. Linda Carlson holds the Enbridge Research Chair in Psychosocial Oncology, is Full Professor in Psychosocial Oncology in the Department of Oncology, Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary, and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychology. She is the Director of Research and works as a Clinical Psychologist at the Department of Psychosocial Resources at the Tom Baker Cancer Centre (TBCC), where she has worked since 1997. She also holds a CIHR SPOR-funded mentorship chair in innovative clinical trials, which funds the TRACTION program (Training in Research And Clinical Trials in Integrative Oncology), supporting a multidisciplinary group of University of Calgary fellows studying Integrative Oncology.

Dr. Kate Guastaferro is an assistant research professor in the Methodology Center at The Pennsylvania State University. Kate has a doctorate and masters of public health with a focus on prevention science. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Prevention and Methodology Training program at Penn State. Her advanced training centered substantively upon the prevention of child sexual abuse and methodologically on innovative methods for the optimization, evaluation, and dissemination of interventions (e.g., the multiphase optimization strategy [MOST]) with high public health impact. As a prevention scientist working at the cutting edge of prevention and intervention science, Dr. Guastaferro’s program of research is devoted to the development, optimization, and evaluation of effective, efficient, economical, and scalable interventions with a specific focus on the prevention of child maltreatment.

Dr. Molly Byrne is a Professor of Health Psychology at the National University of Ireland, Galway. In 2014 she was awarded a Health Research Board (HRB, Ireland) Research Leadership Award (2014-2019) to establish and direct the Health Behaviour Change Research Group (HBCRG). This group aims to improve population health by developing and promoting an evidence-based behavioural science approach to health behaviour change interventions. The team are interested in developing novel approaches to increase the implementation and impact of behaviour change interventions, with particular interest in participatory approaches to research involving patients and public. The team are currently running a number of intervention development studies, pilot trials of interventions and definitive intervention trials. Studies are focused on areas including: self-management among young adults with Type 1 Diabetes; attendance at structured education programmes for people with Type 2 Diabetes; delivery of sexual counselling within hospital cardiac rehabilitation; interventions to increase physical activity among overweight pregnant women and interventions to promote healthy infant feeding delivered in primary care.

Susan M. Czajkowski, Ph.D., is Chief of the Health Behaviors Research Branch (HBRB) of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). She is an expert on psychosocial and behavioral risk factors for disease, including the development and testing of interventions for behavioral risk factors such as obesity, physical inactivity, adverse diets, and non-adherence to medical regimens; the roles of social support and depression in disease risk and recovery; and the assessment of health-related quality of life and psychosocial functioning in patients with chronic diseases. Dr. Czajkowski was also the lead project officer for the NIH-funded Obesity Related Behavioral Intervention Trials (ORBIT) network, a cooperative agreement program supporting seven research sites across the U.S. with the goal of translating findings from basic research on human behavior into more effective interventions to alter obesity-related health behaviors (e.g., diet, physical activity). As part of the ORBIT consortium, Dr. Czajkowski led the development of the ORBIT model for designing and testing behavioral treatments for chronic diseases. She is also a fellow in the Society of Behavioral Medicine, and recently served as President of the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research.

Dr. Sheinfeld Gorin is on the senior faculty of the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School. She is also Director of New York Physicians against Cancer (NYPAC), founded with the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center, a grant-funded research and training group that works with primary care physicians to reduce health disparities in cancer prevention and screening. She has held positions of leadership in cancer prevention and control research with an emphasis on health disparities in the government, non-profit, and academic sectors. She has published or presented over 250 papers; she contributes as an editor or reviewer to over 40 publications. Her scholarly interests are both deep and broad, spanning the fields of cancer epidemiology, health services research, behavioral medicine, empirical research ethics, and implementation science. Her primary interests are in the implications of disparities, particularly among ethnic and racial subgroups, in cancer prevention, screening, and treatment outcomes for breast, colorectal, prostate, and cervical cancers. She has led the development and implementation of multi-level, theory-based, interventions to reduce cancer-related health disparities across diverse subgroups.

Mark Parascandola, Ph.D., M.P.H., is Acting Branch Chief for Research and Training in the Center for Global Health and a Program Director in the Tobacco Control Research Branch, Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). He received his Doctorate in Philosophy of Science from Cambridge University and his Master of Public Health degree in Epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health. Dr. Parascandola also completed an NCI Cancer Prevention Fellowship. He has authored numerous published articles on tobacco use prevention, tobacco control policy, and epidemiologic research methodology. He served as an editor for the NCI/WHO report The Economics of Tobacco and Tobacco Control (2016), the NCI/CDC report Smokeless Tobacco and Public Health: A Global Perspective (2014), and the two-volume encyclopedia Tobacco: Its History and Culture (2005). As a Program Director at NCI, Dr. Parascandola currently oversees a research portfolio with a focus on global tobacco control, smokeless tobacco use, and implementation science. Dr. Parascandola has served as an Embassy Science Fellow and expert advisor on tobacco control, air pollution and health at the U.S. Embassies in Beijing, China, and Warsaw, Poland.

Dr. Sudha Sivaram is Lead for Global Cancer Research Training at the Center for Global Health at the US National Cancer Institute (NCI). In this capacity, she works with colleagues across the institute to develop and coordinate research funding programs in global cancer control and enhance training programs in cancer research. Dr. Sivaram is trained in epidemiology and social science and her interests are to help bring public health research data and evidence to practice. In addition to her work for the US Government, Dr. Sivaram is also an associate adjunct faculty at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health where she is involved in teaching and working on global health programs and where she was faculty in epidemiology prior to her federal tenure.