Current Trainees
PICH trainees are undergraduate and post-graduate students (i.e. Master’s students, PhD Students, Postdoctoral Fellows). PICH trainees have access to a variety of training opportunities such as:
- Conferences
- Webinars
- Mentoring
- Collaborations
- PICH2GO events
- Fellowships
Are you interested in becoming a PICH trainee? Please complete our PICH Trainee application form.
Aayushi is currently an MD-PhD student at the University of Melbourne. Her PhD is being conducted at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and Department of Paediatrics at the UoM. Her topic will be covering chronic pain characterisation in children with cerebral palsy. Aayushi has completed a Bachelor of Biomedicine with a Major in Neuroscience at the UoM and is part way through her medical degree. She is keen on becoming a clinician & researcher in the future with a key focus on paediatric pain, neurodisability & rehabilitation.
Adrián Fernández, graduated in Psychology at the University of Málaga (UMA) in 2021, he obtained the Master’s degree in General Health Psychology at the University of Málaga in 2023 being the first of his class. He has obtained two scholarships from the UMA: “Research Starting Grant” (2021) and “Scholarship for Collaboration with the Management of the Master in General Health Psychology” (2023). He is currently a beneficiary of a predoctoral contract for the training of doctors from the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities of Spain, linked to the project “Effectiveness and implementation of a digital intervention for chronic childhood pain co-designed with patients (Digital SPA)” (PID2021-122885OAI00), supervised by Dr. Rocío de la Vega. In particular, my dissertation focuses on barriers, facilitators and variables involved in the correct implementation of mHealth in youths in Spain
Alex is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University School of Medicine in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative, & Pain Medicine, mentored by Dr. Laura Simons. She earned her PhD in Clinical Psychology at the University of Calgary under the supervision of Dr. Melanie Noel. She completed her Pre-Doctoral Residency in Clinical Psychology at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO). Alex’s research explores the phenomenon of diagnostic uncertainty in pediatric chronic pain. Her doctoral research focused on understanding aspects of the clinical encounter that influence diagnostic uncertainty for youth with chronic pain and their caregivers. Alex’s research has been supported by several provincial and national awards, including an Alberta Innovates Graduate Studentship, a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Doctoral Award, and a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Fellowship.
Alex is a Graduate Student in the Clinical Psychology program at Concordia University. He completed his BSc (Hons) in Psychology and MSc in Psychiatry Research at Dalhousie University. His current research interests include pain in youth undergoing cancer treatments, chronic pain in childhood cancer survivors, and fear of cancer re-occurrence.
Alexandra Breton-Piette is a PhD student at the University of Montreal’s Faculty of Nursing. She holds an MSc in Nursing Sciences from the University of Montreal, where her thesis focused on the current state of scientific literature on prolonged pain in premature neonates. With over five years of experience as a nurse clinician in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), Alexandra’s clinical background inspired her pursuit of higher education to reduce prolonged pain in premature infants and promote optimal pain management. Supervised by Dr. Marilyn Aita, her PhD research aims to describe longitudinal prolonged pain trajectories in premature neonates hospitalized in the NICU undergoing mechanical ventilation or diagnosed with necrotizing enterocolitis. Alexandra is interested in optimizing prolonged pain evaluation using brain-based technologies and developing and validating instruments for standardized prolonged pain assessment
Amber Sepsey (she/ her) is a Michigan native and recently completed her PhD in Clinical Psychology at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI. She is currently completing her postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University in Pediatric Pain Management. Prior to arriving at Stanford, she completed her pre-doctoral internship with Children’s Hospital of Michigan where she split her clinical time between pediatric psychology and neuropsychology. Her research interests surround clinical implications for mindfulness as intervention for at-risk populations experiencing psychological distress, specifically youth experiencing chronic pain. Additionally, her research focuses on accessibility and feasibility of psychological intervention for youth experiencing chronic pain.
Anastasia Mekhael is a Master’s student in the Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology Program at the University of Guelph. Before joining the Pediatric Pain, Health, and Communication Lab, Anastasia worked with caregivers and children, coordinating EmotionFocused Family Therapy workshops. She also completed a Master of Science in Health Psychology at the Memorial University of Newfoundland where she examined the efficacy of oxytocin as an analgesic. Anastasia’s primary research interests focus on the emotional experiences related to chronic pain in children, including the interconnectedness of this experience to the behaviors of caregivers. She is also very interested in taking a patient-oriented approach to studying the implementation of interventions for treating chronic pain to promote resilience, including recruiting caregivers to best support their child. These research interests inform her career goal of mobilizing and disseminating research findings to inform clinical practice guidelines for managing pain.
Anna Hurley-Wallace is a Senior Qualitative Research Associate at the University of Bristol, UK. Her PhD project represented the first step in the development of an interdisciplinary, online intervention for UK-based adolescents and young adults with chronic pain. The project focused on understanding the internet experiences and online resource use of 16 to 24 year-olds, using qualitative interviews. She previously attended the University of Surrey for her MSc (Stage 1) in Health Psychology, and the University of Kent for her BSc in Psychology. Anna currently works on a range of research projects, which seek to improve clinical and wellbeing outcomes for people with chronic musculoskeletal and post-operative pain, using non-pharmacological interventions. Capturing the experiences of young people for use in the development of novel interventions and co-interventions for pain remains central to Anna’s work.
Anna is an MA student in the Neuropsychology stream of the Clinical Psychology program at York University supervised by Dr. Joel Katz. Her interests lie in examining the relationship between memory and pain. In particular, she is curious about how autobiographical memory, a type of long-term memory for personal events, is represented in individuals undergoing major surgery and the role these memories play in the development of chronic postsurgical pain. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, dancing, watching interesting films, and exploring the great outdoors.
Atiqa Pirwani is a MSc student in the Clinical Psychology program at the University of Calgary. She is a member of the PEAK (Pain, Education, Advocacy, Knowledge) laboratory, which has the main focus of finding better solutions for kids and families living with pain. She completed her BSc in biology and her BA in psychology from the University of Ottawa. Atiqa has a particular interest in understanding the development of chronic pain in a pediatric population. Specifically, her interests lie in pain related outcomes following a mild traumatic brain injury. She hopes to learn more about the factors, whether they be neurobiological or psychosocial, that drive the development of pain to chronic pain. Atiqa hopes this knowledge will allow for a better understanding of pain and what the best ways to mitigate the effect of pain in children.
Currently I am in my first year of my PhD at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) where I am studying under the Vice-Chancellor Scholarship Award with Dr David Moore as my lead supervisor. My PhD research is titled “Pain in Autistic Children” which utilizes a mixed methods approach to understand personal pain narratives of autistic children, as well as testing mechanism-based psychophysics. By furthering our understanding of pain in autistic children, clinicians and caregivers will be equipped with a better understanding of pain experience and expression, thus helping to improve pain management in this group and alleviate suffering at a highly vulnerable point in these children’s lives
Betul is a dedicated Ph.D. candidate in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Birmingham. Betul’s academic pursuits were further propelled by a scholarship from the Republic of Turkey Ministry of National Education, which allowed her to embark on a transformative educational journey in the United Kingdom. In 2019, she completed a master’s degree in Clinical Nursing at King’s College London. Currently, Betul’s Ph.D. research focuses on pain experiences among children and young people with cancer, as well as their caregivers, within the context of home settings. Her work informs the digitalization of care related to reporting, assessing, and managing cancer pain. Betul also has a strong interest in involving children, young people and their caregivers in patient and public involvement activities, with a core research interest in empowering them and their caregivers to effectively manage cancer pain in home settings, thus preventing the transition to chronic pain.
Bianca Matthews is a PhD student at Dalhousie University, in the Clinical Psychology program in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience. She works under the supervision of Dr. Christine Chambers, in the Centre for Pediatric Pain Research at the IWK Health Centre. Her past and present research has centred around the contribution of unique minority stressors to chronic pain coping experiences as well as chronic pain knowledge translation pertaining to diverse experiences. She hopes to continue pursuing innovative ways to create interventions that speak to as many experiences as possible. Bianca is a 2023 graduate from McGill University with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology. She is originally from Mississauga, Ontario.
Blair will be entering her first year as a Master of Science student in the Clinical Psychology program at Dalhousie University, where she will be working under the supervision of Dr. Christine Chambers. She previously completed her Bachelor of Arts (Honours) at the University of Guelph with a major in Psychology and minor in Family and Child Studies. Her Honours Thesis research examined the impact of maternal depressive symptoms on the safety strategies used by parents to ensure the safety of their toddlers in the home. As a graduate student, Blair is interested in researching acute postoperative pediatric pain management techniques for young children with chronic health conditions. Further, Blair hopes to use knowledge translation to increase the awareness and implementation of evidence based pediatric pain management practices.
Bukola Mary Ibitoye is a Lecturer and Researcher at the University of Ilorin, Nigeria. She holds a MSc. in Advanced Nursing from the University of Nottingham, UK and a BSc. in Nursing from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana. She is a registered nurse in Ghana and Nigeria, and has worked for many years in clinical practice in both countries. Currently, she is a PhD student at The University of British Columbia, School of Nursing, under the supervision of Dr. Manon Ranger (PICH Faculty Member). For her PhD project, she will assess the usability of virtual reality for pain management in children living with sickle cell disease. Her research interests are in pediatric pain, health technology, sickle cell disease and pediatric oncology. She has over 18 publications in peer-review journals and has received many awards throughout her training. Ms. Ibitoye’s overarching goal is to improve pediatric pain management and nursing care in developing countries through research, education and advocacy.
Cecelia Nelson, MS, is a Behavioral Medicine Resident at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and Medical Center. She has published on pain topics such as adherence to treatment in juvenile arthritis, self-control in pediatric migraine, and the relation between pain and sleep for youth with inflammatory bowel disease. She also demonstrates a passion for advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in both the field of pediatric psychology and in the treatment of pain. Her current clinical and research interests are related to the assessment and behavioral treatment of pain in populations that are less able to communicate their pain experience (e.g., neonates, early childhood, non-verbal children) and the expansion of pediatric pain psychology into gynecologic conditions.
Dr. Cheryl Chow is a neuroscientist and a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Psychology at York University. She earned her PhD degree (funded by the Ontario Mental Health Foundation Studentship and Ontario Graduate Scholarships) in Neuroscience and completed her first postdoctoral training (funded by the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Pain Research and Care Postdoctoral Fellowship) at McMaster University. Prior to that, she completed a Master of Science degree in Biology at California State University, Los Angeles and earned an Honours Undergraduate degree in Human Biology and Psychology at University of Toronto. The interdisciplinary nature of her research interests has led to publications7-10 in a wide range of journals including the Psychological Bulletin (IF=15.6) and JAMA Open ((IF=5.03) etc., and have been subsequently awarded Journal of Pediatric Psychology Most cited paper award 2017, Faculty of Health Sciences Outstanding Achievements Award 2017 and Association for Psychological Science Research Award 2016.
Dr. Cristal Lopez is a Clinical Psychology Postdoctoral Fellow at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA). As part of her fellowship, she joined the Biobehavioral Pain laboratory under the primary mentorship of Dr. Jeffrey I. Gold. She earned her doctorate from Texas A&M University and has trained at Texas Children’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and Texas A&M School of Medicine. As a scientist-practitioner, she has assisted in various clinical research trials aimed at evaluating and validating therapeutic interventions for pediatric populations. Her emerging program of research seeks to evaluate integrative medicine practices (i.e., acupuncture, massage, mindfulness) for pediatric patients experiencing acute and chronic pain and palliative care needs. After fellowship, she hopes to continue measuring the impact of integrative and whole person health for diverse pediatric patients and their families.
Corinne Evans is a clinical psychology doctoral student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She graduated from the University of Florida in May 2020 with a Bachelor of Science in psychology and a minor in health disparities in society. During her time at the University of Florida, Corinne gained research experiences in pediatric sickle cell disease andasthma. At the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Corinne primarily studies the biopsychosocial contributors associated with pediatric functional abdominal pain outcomes. Corinne has also studied pediatric obesity and family-based weight management during her time at UAB. Corinne is interested in translational research for pediatric chronic pain management. In the future, Corinne envisions herself working at an academic medical center and focusing on developing and implementing evidence-based treatments for pediatric pain and other pediatric illness populations.
I am a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, recently graduated from the University of Massachusetts Boston with a PhD in Counseling Psychology. I completed my doctoral internship at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine/Kennedy Krieger Institute where I worked as part of the inpatient
rehabilitation team and working alongside adolescents and children presenting with chronic pain and following orthopedic surgery. At Stanford, I have a 50% research appointment within the Biobehavioral Pediatric Pain Lab, under the mentorship of Dr. Laura Simons where I am interested in studying the
application of team science principles in pediatric pain care, the use of qualitative methodology to highlight patient voices, and the study of pediatric pain rehabilitation. I also have a 50% clinical appointment within the Pediatric Pain Management Clinic at Stanford Children’s Hospital wherein I conduct assessments and deliver treatment in the outpatient setting and work as part of the pediatric rehabilitation program.
Danielle Mountain is a Health Psychology PhD student at the University of Manchester, UK. Her PhD aims to explore and characterise chronic musculoskeletal pain in children and young people, particularly the differences between those with inflammatory pathologies and those with non-inflammatory pathologies. To examine the broader social dynamics associated with pain she will be acquiring data from children/young people, their parents/caregivers and healthcare professionals. Multiple facets of the pain experience will be examined to capture it’s complexity, including pain beliefs, pain behaviours, and pain emotion. A multi-dimensional mobile health pain assessment tool, called My Pain Tracker, will be utilized to begin to phenotype specific pain features associated with these two groups.
Danton Matheus de Souza recently started his doctoral program in Health Sciences at the School of Nursing, University of São Paulo (EEUSP), under the supervision of Professor Lisabelle Mariano Rossato; and intends to undertake a sandwich period at the University of Melbourne under the supervision of Professor Denise Harrison. Danton is a nurse with a specialization in pediatric and adolescent healthcare, both from EEUSP. His research focus is on the challenges of nursing care for neonates, children, and teenagers in the healthcare network, with a specific emphasis on pain management. In recent years, he has dedicated himself to studying pain management in hospitalized children, identifying gaps and seeking to improve them, especially with a focus on non-pharmacological interventions for acute pain relief related to diseases or painful and stressful procedures, using mixed methods studies.
Delane Linkiewich is a master’s student in the Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology Program at the University of Guelph. Her research takes place in the Pediatric Pain, Health and Communication Lab under the supervision of Dr. C. Meghan McMurtry. Her primary research interests focus on the social context of youth living with chronic pain, namely peer support and peer relationships. Outside of the peer-context, Delane is also interested in the family context in how parents and families support youth living with pain as well as patient engagement in research. Delane is actively involved in the pain community as she co-chairs the Patient Engagement Committee of the Chronic Pain Network and sits on the Steering Committee for the Alberta Pain Research Network. Delane has also been living with pain for the past 12 years and is a passionate advocate for people living with pain.
Don Daniel completed his bachelor’s degree in Physiology with a minor in Biotechnology at McGill University in 2018. His interest in improving the way we assess pain in the clinic influenced him to pursue a PhD at McGill University in Experimental Surgery under the supervision of Dr. Catherine Ferland in her clinical research laboratory at the Shriners Hospitals for Children – Canada. The methods he uses include quantitative sensory testing and electroencephalography. His goal is to profile patients based on their psychosocial and psychophysical characteristics to improve personalized pain management.
Elisabeth Rønning Rinde is a clinical neuropsychologist who graduated from the University of Oslo in 1994. She has been working in the field of rehabilitation/ habilitation almost all of her career, and is currently employed at the Child Habilitation Services at Telemark Hospital Trust in Skien, Norway. Elisabeth is a PhD-candidate at the University of Oslo, supervised by Randi Dovland Andersen, Reidun B. Jahnsen, Agneta Anderzen-Carlsson. She is doing qualitative research in the field of pediatric pain, specifically habilitation and children with cerebral palsy. The aim of her research project is to describe children’s and parents’ lived experience with pain, based on in-depth interviews. She is affiliated to the CPPain Research Program, which is coordinated from Telemark Hospital Trust, and to the Research Center for Habilitation and Rehabilitation Models and Services (CHARM) at University of Oslo.
Elise Kammerer is working toward her PhD in Pediatrics at the University of Alberta and is supervised by Drs. Samina Ali and Lisa Hartling. Elise holds an MA and DPhil from the University of Cologne and an MPH from the University of Manchester. Her doctoral research uses participatory approaches to understand the pain experiences of marginalized children and their families in the pediatric emergency department. Her previous work has used integrated knowledge translation to understand healthcare professionals’, children’s, and families’ experiences with pain management at the Stollery Children’s Hospital, with special attention paid to the role of patient and family advocacy in improving children’s pain experiences.
I am a second-year Clinical Psychology PhD student at Palo Alto University with an emphasis in pediatric behavioral healthcare. I am currently doing research at Stanford University, at the Biobehavioral Pediatric Pain Lab (BPP) under the mentorship of Dr. Laura Simons. At BPP a current primary project I am working on is studying the utilization of virtual reality as a treatment for chronic pain compared to standard physical therapy. I am also involved in the Center for the Study and Treatment of Anxious Youth at Palo Alto University (CSTAY) under the mentorship of Dr. Robert Friedberg. CSTAY emphasizes the utilization of CBT for childhood anxiety disorders along with the dissemination and training of CBT and accessibility to Pediatric Behavioral Health Care. I hope to continue to receive both clinical and research exposure to advance in my desired career trajectory in health psychology, specifically pediatric chronic pain.
Emily Wildeboer is a current PhD graduate student at Dalhousie University, in the Clinical Psychology program at the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience. She works under the supervision of Dr. Christine Chambers, in the Centre for Pediatric Pain Research at the IWK Health Care Centre. Her current research centers around the relationship between chronic pain, depression and suicidality in adolescents. Emily graduated from the University of Western Ontario in 2020 with an Honours Specialization in Psychology from Huron University College. She completed her Honours Thesis in social psychology, examining effective leadership qualities in relation to attributions of blame, as well as additional research projects focusing on infants’ memory for melodies. She is from Burlington, Ontario.
I am currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Biobehavioral Pediatric Pain (BPP) Lab, Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative, and Pain Medicine since July 2021. Under the supervision of Prof. dr. Laura Simons I am researching the neuropsychological mechanisms underlying chronic pain in pediatric populations. Previously, I have conducted research at the Center for the Psychology of Learning and Experimental Psychopathology (CLEP) at KU Leuven, Belgium (2018-2021). Supervised by Prof. dr. Tom Beckers we investigated neural and physiological markers related to the attenuation of fear memories. My PhD research was conducted at the Research Group on Health Psychology (OGP) at KU Leuven and the Department of Cognitive Neuroscience of Maastricht University (The Netherlands) under the joint supervision of Prof. dr. Johan Vlaeyen, Prof. dr. Rainer Goebel, Dr. Ann Meulders, and Dr. Amanda Kaas (2013-
2018). During this time we investigated fear learning processes and neural networks related to painful touch
Emma Truffyn is currently a master’s student in the Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology Program at the University of Guelph. Her research takes place in the Pediatric Pain, Health, and Communication Lab under the supervision of Dr. C. Meghan McMurtry. Her research interests
broadly focus on needle fear and pain management across various medical settings to improve outcomes for children and families. She is passionate about conducting patient-oriented research that engages patients and families to better understand lived experiences of pain. Prior to joining
the PPHC lab, Emma completed her undergraduate degree in Psychology, with a concentration in Forensic Psychology, at St. Francis Xavier University, where she examined anxiety in the context of dental services. Additionally, she completed her MA in Counselling Psychology from Western University and has worked clinically as a School Psychometrist
Dr. Emre Ilhan (PhD, DPT, BSc Psychology (Hons)) is a physiotherapist, educator, and researcher whose main areas of interest in paediatric pain include non-acute pain in critically ill neonates and infants, management of neuropathic pain in children and adolescents, and paediatric chronic musculoskeletal pain. Emre is currently undertaking post-doctoral research on screening for neuropathic pain in children and adolescents. Emre is involved in multiple pain and paediatric pain groups, all of which aim to improve the identification and treatment of pain in children. Emre is particularly interested in the ethical issues surrounding paediatric pain in order to advocate for and minimize harms to children.
Estelle Guingo is a French Ph.D. Student at Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue (UQAT), supervised by David Paquin (UQAT) and Sylvie Le May (Université de Montréal – UdeM). After a engineer training in computer sciences and digital creation in France, she is now mainly studying therapeutic video games conception. More especially, she is affiliated to Sainte-Justine Hospital Center in Montreal since 2019, focusing on virtual reality use to manage anxiety and pain for children from 6 to 17. She is working on digital tools adapted to different units: Anxiety management for MRI preparation, pain management in hydrotherapy or in bone pins and sutures removal. Her doctoral project is about the conception of a custom game for children with cancer, to help them to manage pain and anxiety. The main purpose is to create a friendly avatar with the child who’ll follow him all along his treatments using virtual reality and mobile applications.
Estreya is a first-year MA student in the Clinical Developmental Psychology program at York University under the supervision of Dr. Rebecca Pillai Riddell, she is also pursuing a Diploma in Health Psychology. She received her B.A. (Specialized Honours) in Psychology in the Cognitive Neuropsychology Stream from Glendon College, York University. Estreya’s master’s thesis will review skin-to-skin interventions for premature infant pain management in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).
Ester Solé is a psychologist and postdoctoral researcher at Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Tarragona (Spain), as a member of the research lab, Algos, Research on pain. Her research has been mainly centered on pediatric pain; indeed, her doctoral thesis was about the study of some cognitive factors that influence on adolescents’ pain experience. She has published about 35 papers in scientific journals and contributed with several communications in international and national conferences. Her current main research interests are focused on treatment of pediatric chronic pain, study of pain in children with intellectual disabilities and economic impact of families with a child with chronic pain. She also participates, as a psychologist, in a pain treatment for adolescents with chronic pain at Hospital Sant Joan, in Reus. As well, she teach some subjects related to clinical and health psychology at university. Ester loves travelling, history and finding out other cultures and alternative lifestyles.
PhD Student from Barcelona, Spain exploring resilience and family dynamics in pediatric chronic pain. Gemma Ruiz holds a BSc in Psychology from the UAB (Spain), an Official Master’s Degree in Perinatal and Child Psychology and Psychopathology from the UV (Spain) and an Official Master’s Degree in Teaching of Compulsory Secondary Education in the field of School Psychology from the UPF and UOC (Spain). She has experience in the social and educational fields, as well as clinical. Gemma did her clinical internships in pediatric oncology, neonatology and, pediatric neurodevelopment/neuropsychology at different hospitals/centers in Spain. She has been doing research from 2013 to the present in different projects involving parents, infants, attachment and parental sensitivity; twins and the influence of perinatal factors on their development; and e-Health and functional abdominal pain in children, as well as adults with cervical-lumbar pain.
Giulia Mesaroli is a Physiotherapist at SickKids and first year master’s student in Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Toronto. Her research work is in the iOuch Lab at SickKids under the supervision of Dr Jennifer Stinson. She previously earned a MScPT in 2013 and BASc (Honours) in 2011. Her thesis will focus on developing and validating a screening tool for pediatric neuropathic pain and complex regional pain syndrome. She also has a keen interest in using virtual reality for pediatric rehabilitation. Giulia is currently supported by the SickKids Clinician Scientist Training Program and CIHR Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarship-Master’s award
Grace recently completed her PhD in Psychology and Health (very recently, October 2020!) at the School of Psychology, National University of Ireland, Galway, located on the West coast of Ireland. Her PhD research focused on the influence of parental social support during their child’s “everyday” pain experiences (i.e., minor bumps and scrapes that children experience at home). She used a combination of video-cameras and parent diaries to record parent-child interactions during everyday painful events and conducted a pre-clinical study with juvenile rodents undergoing pain tests in different social paradigms (i.e., presence/absence of their mother). In her spare time, Grace enjoys knitting, baking, and playing video games.
Greg is a registered paramedic with 13 years of clinical experience in the UK ambulance service. He works across the East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust and the University of Lincoln as a Paramedic Research Fellow and a Senior Lecturer in Paramedic Science.
He has worked on several clinical trials including the NIHR HTA funded AIRWAYS-2 and PARAMEDIC-3 studies. He completed his PhD in 2020 at the University of Lincoln, titled “Pre-hospital pain management in children: A mixed methods study”.
He is an active member of the Community and Health Research Unit (CaHRU) and leads the Prehospital and Emergency Quality and Outcomes (PEQO) theme. He is also an Associate Editor for the British Paramedic Journal.
Greg has recently been awarded a prestigious Advanced Clinical and Practitioner Academic Fellowship (ACAF), making him the first paramedic in England to receive a HEE/NIHR funded postdoctoral fellowship.
Emily is a doctoral candidate at the University of South Australia, supported by the Australian Pain Society (APS). She is supervised by a multi-disciplinary team who are all leaders in their field of interest; Prof Lorimer Moseley, Dr Carolyn Berryman, A/Prof Adrienne Harvey, and Dr Abi Thirumanickam. Her research investigates effective self-report methods for children with cerebral palsy (CP) and complex communication needs (CCN) to better communicate their pain; Aiming to provide recommendations and guidance on how to better support children with CCN, with a large emphasis on co-design and development alongside children and stakeholders. She has a large interest in supporting vulnerable groups better opportunities to report and manage their pain. She lives in Adelaide, Australia and works alongside the Centre for Pain IIMPACT at UniSA.
Haleh is a first-year MA student in the Clinical Developmental Psychology program at York University under the supervision of Dr. Rebecca Pillai Riddell. In 2022, she received a Bachelor of Science (Specialized Honours) in Psychology from York University. Haleh’s primary research interest lies in exploring innovative technologies using artificial intelligence to better understand and assess infant pain and ultimately improve the practice of infant pain management in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).
Dr. Hannah Durand is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Pain Research at the National University of Ireland, Galway. She is an academic health psychologist with a special research interest in gynaecological pain among adolescents and young people. Dr Durand’s contribution to the science of health psychology has been acknowledged through receipt of the Irish Pain Society Clinical Pain Research Medal in 2015 and 2020, the Early Career Award of the International Society for Behavioral Medicine in 2018, and the Herman Schaalma Award of the European Health Psychology Society in 2020.
Hana is a dedicated researcher focused on improving paediatric pain management during vaccinations. Currently a PhD student at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Hana specializes in strategies to reduce pain during vaccinations for children, particularly infants who are less than one year. With a background in paediatric healthcare, Hana’s work aims to enhance the overall experience of young patients and alleviate their fear and discomfort associated with medical procedures. Passionate about evidence-based practices; therefore, Hana is committed to integrating innovative pain management techniques into clinical
settings. Hana’s research aims to not only contributes to the academic community but also claims to have practical implications for healthcare providers and families. Hana is an advocate for child health and wellbeing, continually striving to create a more compassionate and effective approach to paediatric care.
Hannah is a fifth year doctoral student in Clinical-Developmental Psychology at York University in Toronto, Canada. She was introduced to pediatric pain research as an undergraduate Honours thesis student at Dalhousie University, and joined PICH in 2013. She continued to pursue her interest in pediatric pain in graduate school, where she joined the Opportunities to Understand Childhood Hurt Laboratory under Dr. Rebecca Pillai Riddell’s supervision. Hannah’s earlier program of research focused on parental factors that influence infants’ pain-related distress (e.g., parent distress-promoting behaviours, sensitivity and soothing behaviours, and psychological distress). Her doctoral dissertation focuses on pain in toddlerhood, exploring different behaviours that children use to regulate their own pain-related distress during vaccinations (e.g., disengagement of attention, parent-directed behaviours, and physical self-soothing), and how these interact with parent behaviours to promote successful regulation. In September 2021, Hannah will begin her pre-doctoral residency at Alberta Children’s Hospital.
Hayley Leake is a doctoral candidate at the University of South Australia supervised by Prof. Lorimer Moseley, Dr. Lauren Heathcote and A/Prof. Tasha Stanton. Her thesis centres around optimising pain science education for adolescents with chronic pain using methods such as systematic reviews, Delphi-surveys and a mixture of qualitative research. She is interested in understanding the role of pain science education for youth and families with chronic pain, especially in the context of diagnostic uncertainty. She is also interested in knowledge translation for pain science education, and the potential role of social media. Hayley is a physiotherapist, with a clinical career in both public and private settings in Australia. She currently lives in Sydney, Australia and works with the Centre for Pain IMPACT at Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA).
Hiba is a PhD student in the CPA-accredited Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology program at the University of Guelph. She completed her Bachelor of Science in Psychology with a minor in Biology at the University of Waterloo in 2018. Hiba’s research interests lie at the intersection of health and psychology and she is passionate about improving needle procedures, such as vaccinations and venipunctures, for children and their parents. For her master’s thesis, Hiba examined potential protective factors of needle fear as well as factors beyond pain that drive needle fear in children and adults. For her PhD dissertation, Hiba hopes to build upon her master’s research and evaluate an evidence-informed children’s e-book intervention for needle fear with the goal of improving vaccine uptake.
Ilana is currently a graduate student in the Clinical Developmental Psychology program at York University under the supervision of Dr. Rebecca Pillai Riddell. Her master’s thesis examined parent and child predictors of preschool distress regulation patterns in the vaccination context. Ilana’s doctoral research will focus on parents and infants in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Prior to her graduate work, Ilana worked in the Biobehavioral Family Studies Laboratory at the Cambridge Health Alliance studying the associations between maternal history of maltreatment, maternal-infant interactions, and maternal and infant neuroendocrine stress responses. Ilana graduated with a Master’s degree in Human Development and Psychology from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and an undergraduate degree in Psychology from New York University.
Inge Timmers is a postdoctoral researcher at the Biobehavioral Pediatric Pain (BPP) Lab at Stanford University and at Rehabilitation Medicine Department at Maastricht University. She is broadly interested in using neuroimaging as a tool to probe psychosocial mechanisms in persistent pain. Inge was trained as a psychologist researcher in Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience at Maastricht University. Her PhD research focused on Cognitive Neuroscience and Metabolic Pediatrics. After her PhD, in 2014, she started her first postdoc at Maastricht University, where she studied neural correlates of exposure in vivo treatment in adults with chronic pain. In 2017, she shifted her focus more towards pediatric pain. Her main research interests focus on biobehavioral factors that play a role in the development and the maintenance of chronic pain, with a major interest in -but not limited to- youth with chronic pain and their parents.
Jaimie is a PhD student in Clinical Psychology at the University of Calgary, working under the supervision of Dr. Melanie Noel in the PEAK Research Lab. Her research aims to improve our understanding of the role that both parents and trauma/adversity can play in pediatric chronic pain. Her Master’s research examined adverse childhood experiences in parents of youth with chronic pain including their prevalence and association with the physical and mental health of parents and youth. Her doctoral research will examine factors that predict risk and resiliency in children whose parents have chronic pain. Before moving to Calgary, Jaimie completed her BA (Hons) in Psychology at Dalhousie University and worked in the Centre for Pediatric Pain Research with Dr. Christine Chambers. When Jaimie isn’t busy researching, she can be found soaking up the Calgary sun, eating delicious food, or watching baseball (Go Blue Jays!).
Jenna is a first year Master of Science student in the Medical Science program at the University of Calgary. Her research interests broadly lie in the implications of chronic pain and internalizing mental health conditions for pediatric patients. Jenna’s masters project will focus on prenatal stress and maternal pain in relation to child brain development. Jenna was born and raised in Vancouver, BC and completed her Bachelor of Science in Integrated Science at the University of British Columbia. During her undergraduate degree, she had the opportunity to study pediatric populations in a variety of clinical settings at British Columbia Children’s Hospital and found that pain was prominent in a variety of childhood disease, which inspired her interest in pain research.
Jeewan Jyoti is a Neonatal nurse and a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney. She worked as a Registered nurse at a leading tertiary neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in Sydney for 7 years and currently holds a position of Clinical Research Nurse. Following M.Sc. in Pediatric Nursing, Jeewan has completed a Clinical Neonatal Nursing Research Fellowship, during which she worked on a study delving into parents’ awareness and involvement in managing their baby’s pain in the NICU setting. Jeewan is passionate about empowering parents to actively participate in the pain care of their infants. Her research aims to expand on the comprehensive pain assessment during postoperative period. Jeewan envisions a future where parents are not only partners in care but empowered advocates in their baby’s pain management journey. Jeewan is a compassionate advocate for neonatal health, consistently working towards bridging the gap between research findings and real world applications
Jéssica Ding is a nurse clinician who works with children in orthopaedic and surgical settings. She is also a full-time master’s student in Advanced Practice Nursing at McGill University. Jéssica has an interest in children’s healthcare research and as her master’s project, she is exploring the use of an evidence-informed podcast series to support the implementation of virtual reality in healthcare for children undergoing medical procedures. Jéssica is also passionate about the integration of technology in healthcare and the creation of culturally adapted medical resources for children in middle-to-low-income countries to help minimize the global health inequity.
Jen Norton is a PhD candidate at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia, supervised by Dr. Joshua Pate, Professor Toby Newton-John, and Dr. Mark Alcock. Her thesis centres around upskilling the clinical and non-technical skills of community and non-specialist health professionals working with children experiencing chronic pain, using a range of research methodology. She is interested in barriers and facilitators to delivery of biopsychosocially informed pain intervention for children with chronic pain, and, how to upskill a wider range of health professionals with the aim to “bridge the gap” between community and specialist tertiary services. Jen is a senior paediatric physiotherapist, with a clinical career in state schools and private practice settings in Australia. She currently lives in Queensland, Australia, and works part-time with Department of Education while studying.
Hana is a dedicated researcher focused on improving paediatric pain management during vaccinations. Currently a PhD student at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Hana specializes in strategies to reduce pain during vaccinations for children, particularly infants who are less than one year. With a background in paediatric healthcare, Hana’s work aims to enhance the overall experience of young patients and alleviate their fear and discomfort
associated with medical procedures. Passionate about evidence-based practices; therefore, Hana is committed to integrating innovative pain management techniques into clinical settings. Hana’s research aims to not only contributes to the academic community but also aims to have practical implications for healthcare providers and families. Hana is an advocate for child health and wellbeing, continually striving to create a more compassionate and effective approach to paediatric care.
Graduated in Psychology and Master of General Healthy Psychology by the University of the Balearic Islands. Josep Roman Juan is a PhD student in the Health, Psychology and Psychiatry program at the University Rovira i Virgili, mentored by Prof. Jordi Miró. He is also a member of the Unit for Study and Treatment of Pain – ALGOS leaded by Prof. Jordi Miró. His doctoral research is funded by a grant from the Spanish Minister of Science and Innovation.
Juliana Choueiry is a graduate student pursuing her Master of Science in Nursing at the University of Ottawa and a Registered Nurse at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario. Juliana has been contributing to pain research as a research assistant at the Children Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute and at the University of Ottawa since 2017. Her research mainly focuses on improving pain assessment practices for pediatric patients, especially cognitively impaired children. Juliana is dedicated to standardizing training for pediatric pain assessment tools in pediatric hospitals and to create partnerships with parents during pain assessment in order to optimize the management of pain for all children.
Jules Richards is a Nurse Practitioner who has worked with young people dealing with persistent pain for over fifteen years. She has a PhD in creative writing, in which she explored the lived experience of young people with persistent pain through a fictional narrative. She has been the Chief Investigator for a number of research studies, which have attracted grant funding. She is interested in transdisciplinary research and establishing links between the creative arts, education and health. Jules is passionate about advocating for young people with persistent pain and increasing awareness of the lived experience of persistent pain
Dr. Justine Dol is a postdoctoral fellow at IWK Health under the supervision of Dr. Christine Chambers. She completed her PhD in Health at Dalhousie University. Her research focuses on two main areas: (1) knowledge mobilization of pediatric pain management and (2) improving the postpartum experience and the perinatal mental health of all parents. Both areas are underpinned by three approaches: (1) patient-oriented research, (2) equity, diversity, and inclusion, and (3) the use of eHealth technology. Dr. Dol is a recipient of a CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Karen is a Master of Science student in the Neuroscience program at the University of Calgary, mentored by Dr. Jillian Miller. She is a member of the P.A.I.N.S lab (Pediatric Anesthesia, Imaging & Neurodevelopmental Science), located at the Alberta Children’s Hospital. Karen is interested in finding the role that pain memories play in the chronification of post-surgical pain in youth undergoing major surgeries. She hopes that her research helps in paving the way for the development of post-surgical pain management therapies for this vulnerable population, positively benefiting children’s overall health and wellness.
Kelly is a first-year Ph.D. in Nursing student in the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Toronto. Previously, Kelly completed her Bachelor of Science in Biology and Bachelor of Science in Nursing at the University of British Columbia. During her undergraduate degree, Kelly was involved in research at BC Children’s Hospital as a research assistant to explore the treatment and patient outcomes of children living with juvenile idiopathic arthritis. This experience led to Kelly’s research interests, which is the implementation of digital interventions to promote self-management and treat pain experienced by children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis and other chronic diseases. Kelly also works as a registered nurse at the Hospital for Sick Children.
Dr. Kate Gamwell is a T32 postdoctoral research fellow in the Center for Adherence and Self Management under the primary mentorship of Dr. Kevin Hommel. Kate earned her doctorate from Oklahoma State University with dual specializations in pediatric psychology and clinical child psychology. Her dissertation was the first study to empirically investigate the relationship between illness stigma, thwarted social belongingness, and depressive symptoms in pediatric inflammatory bowel disease. Kate’s research interests include identification and intervention of cognitive appraisals impacting psychosocial adjustment and health-related outcomes in youth with chronic pain and their caregivers. She is particularly interested in the parent-child dyadic relationship and identifying risk and resilience factors in underserved pediatric populations to improve pain and self-management. Kate values multidisciplinary approaches that blend innovative features such as technology, exercise, and evidence-based psychotherapeutic skills. After fellowship, she hopes to continue in this line of research implementing clinically meaningful protocols to promote enhanced quality of life.
Kayla is an MA/PhD student in Clinical Psychology at the University of Saskatchewan. Kayla’s research interests focus primarily on examining the psychological and psychosocial influences on pain, specifically in the area of adolescents with dysmenorrhea. As part of her PhD dissertation, Kayla will be adapting and piloting a mindfulness-based intervention for adolescents with dysmenorrhea. In the past, Kayla has examined the impact of dysmenorrhea on psychological and social functioning in adolescents. Kayla aspires to become a clinical health psychologist to help improve the lives of individuals living with various health concerns, such as chronic pain, by applying psychological interventions.
Dr. Barnett is a postdoctoral fellow in the Pediatric Pain Research Center. She serves as an interventionist for the Fibromyalgia Integrative Training Program for Teens (FIT Teens), an NIH-funded clinical trial investigating exercise and behavioral interventions for adolescents with fibromyalgia. Her research interests are focused on intervention development for pediatric chronic medical conditions with a specific focus on pediatric chronic pain, examining brain-behavior associations in adolescents with chronic pain, and identifying psychological and behavioral factors to promote functional improvement in patients with chronic pain. Dr. Barnett completed her graduate training at Brigham Young University and internship at the University of Florida before returning to Cincinnati Children’s for her postdoctoral fellowship, where she worked prior to graduate school as a clinical research coordinator in Behavioral Medicine and Clinical Psychology.
Kimberly Brown is a doctoral student in Clinical Psychology at Palo Alto University where she is pursuing the Pediatric Behavioral Health Care Area of Emphasis. She is a member of the Center for the Study and Treatment of Anxious Youth (CSTAY), a research group led by Dr. Robert Friedberg that studies evidence-based treatments for youth in integrated care settings. Clinically, Kimberly is gaining practicum experience at Kaiser Permanente in the Pediatric Embedded Behavioral Medicine Department and at the Pediatric Pain Management Clinic at Stanford Children’s Health. Kimberly moved to California from the east coast where she received a master’s in Mental Health Counseling and Behavioral Medicine from Boston University School of Medicine. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her partner and their cat, Darla, who loves PhD-from-home life. Kimberly aspires to be a pediatric psychologist in an academic medical center following graduation.
Dr. Kimberly (Kim) Klages is a NIH-funded NRSA T32 postdoctoral fellow at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center specializing in pediatric oncology and chronic pain. Her research interests are focused on identifying biopsychosocial risk factors for adverse health outcomes among youth with chronic health conditions, particularly those with pediatric cancer. She is specifically interested in identifying biopsychosocial targets of intervention to prevent or
mitigate chronic pain in survivors of childhood cancer.
Kaytlin is a 4th year PhD Candidate in Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology at the University of Guelph working with Dr. Meghan McMurtry in the Pediatric Pain, Health and Communication Lab. Broadly, Kaytlin is interested in studying the social determinants of health. Kaytlin’s graduate program of research has focused on understanding the physiological, cognitive-affective, and contextual factors that shape caregiver responses during their child’s acute pain, which she has studied in both laboratory and hospital settings. Kaytlin is also involved in projects related to the assessment and treatment of needle fear.
Laurie A. Lee is a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit Nurse (PICU) Practioner, PhD Candidate and clinician scientist. In her over 20 years of practice in the PICU, the prevention and management of pain in critically ill children has been an important focus. She led the development and implementation of the Alberta Children’s Hospital PICU Pain, Agitation and Delirium prevention program and is an early career researcher with a program of research focused on patient and family engagement in the detection, prevention, and management of PICU related pain, agitation and delirium. Laurie is currently completing her doctoral studies in epidemiology under the supervision of Dr. Kirsten Fiest and Dr. Chip Doig at the University of Calgary. Her thesis work is supported by committee member Dr. Katie Birnie. Laurie is also the Director of the Alberta Children’s Hospital, PICU Research program overseeing both observational and interventional research within the PICU.
Lindsey is a Ph.D. student in the Clinical Psychology Program at the University of Saskatchewan under the supervision of Dr. Michelle Gagnon. Lindsey received her B.Sc. (Honours) majoring in Psychology with First Class Standing from the University of Calgary. For her honours thesis, she examined psychosocial and health outcomes in long-term survivors of pediatric cancer at the Alberta Children’s Hospital in Calgary. Specifically, she investigated predictors of abnormal body mass index (BMI) in pediatric survivors over time. During her undergraduate degree, she also investigated the association between physical activity and psychological outcomes in pediatric survivors of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Lindsey’s dissertation focuses on parent-adolescent pain communication and emotion regulation in families of youth experiencing chronic pain. Her research interests are in pediatric psychology, chronic illness, pain, emotion regulation, family factors, and health-related quality of life.
Lojain Hamwi is a master’s student in the Clinical Developmental Psychology program at York University. Lojain is also pursuing neuropsychology and health psychology specializations. She completed her Bachelor of Science in Psychology at Carleton University, and Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Science at the University of Ottawa. Lojain’s master’s thesis will provide a better understanding of the developmental changes in acute pain expression in infants and toddlers. Her research is supervised by Dr. Rebecca Pillai Riddell
Martina Carlsen Misic is a neonatal nurse at Örebro University Hospital, Sweden. She was admitted as a doctoral student at Örebro University in December 2018. Martina’s PhD-project will explore different aspects of pain assessment and treatment. Within the project SWEpap – parents as pain management in Swedish neonatal care, Martina will investigate parents’ and staffs’ perceptions about and acceptance for parent led pain management methods. Part two of the project will test the efficacy of combined pain management methods. The subsequent studies will focus on ROP-screening in the premature born infant. One study will focus on nurses’ experiences of ROP-screening and in the other study pain alleviation during ROP-screening with pharmacological methods will be tested. Martina is a member of the research group PEARL – Pain in Early Life.
Dr. Mary Lynch is a clinical psychology postdoctoral fellow at Indiana University School of Medicine working in the pediatric pain management program at Riley Children’s Hospital. She earned her PhD in Medical Clinical Psychology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham after completing her internship at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Her emerging program of research seeks to better understand the protective, resilience processes of youth experiencing chronic pain. Important positive factors for youth with chronic illness include social support and engaging in healthy behaviors (i.e., sleep and physical activity). Through both qualitative and quantitative methods, she seeks to understand how adolescents and young adults perceive their friendships and barriers to developing a supportive network. Additionally, she plans to continue to conduct research evaluating health behaviors in youth with chronic pain in order to better understand how to help pediatric patients capitalize on these lifestyle based coping strategies.
Originally from Switzerland, Mathilde completed her BA in Biology at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and Helsinki University, Finland, before graduating from a Research MSc in Fundamental Neuroscience at the University of Maastricht. She is now completing her PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Maastricht, under the supervision of Prof. Bert Joosten and Dr. Sinno Simons. Her PhD focuses on neonatal procedural pain and its long-term effects, with a special interest on the effects of neonatal procedural pain on adult stress response. By means of a preclinical model, she is also investigating the effects of neonatal pain on neurodevelopmental processes and whether those are driven by epigenetic mechanisms. Eventually, bettering the understanding of repetitive neonatal procedural pain consequences will provide new pharmacological treatment of neonatal procedural pain.
Megan is a postdoctoral fellow at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) under the mentorship of Dr. Adam Hirsh. She completed her PhD in Clinical Psychology at IUPUI in 2019 with a research focus in pediatric pain. Her emerging program of research seeks to better understand: 1) psychosocial factors (e.g., pain-related injustice, pain invalidation, coping strategies) that influence functioning in youth with pain, and 2) sociocultural factors that facilitate and impede the delivery of guideline-concordant care for youth with pain. To date, she has examined how pain-related injustice appraisals relate to functional outcomes, as well as how caregiver factors, such as pain-related injustice and catastrophizing, influence the child’s pain experience. Additionally, she has used virtual patient methodology to examine how healthcare provider factors (racial/gender bias, stigma, and empathy) and pediatric patient and parent characteristics (e.g., race, gender) individually and interactively affect pain care for pediatric patients with pain.
Meredith Smith is a Lecturer in Physiotherapy within the School of Allied Health Science and Practice. Her background is as a clinical physiotherapist in paediatrics and adult rehabilitation, with specialized skills in paediatric rehabilitation and three dimensional gait analysis. Meredith is currently completing a PhD on the topic ‘Tailoring Chronic Pain Assessment for Children and Young People with Cerebral Palsy’, which is focusing on adapting existing pain assessment tools to better represent children and young people with cerebral palsy. Meredith is a titled APA Paediatric Physiotherapist, a committee member for the APA Paediatric special interest group and a member of the Australasian Academy of Cerebral Palsy and Developmental Medicine Pain in Cerebral Palsy special interest group. Meredith also continues to work clinically at Novita and the Women’s and Children’s Hospital.
Mica Gabrielle Marbil is a first-year Master of Science student in the Clinical Psychology program at the University of Calgary, and works with Dr. Katie Birnie in the Partnering For Pain laboratory. Mica completed her Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Psychology, First Class, at the University of Calgary, where she examined posttraumatic headache in children with mild traumatic brain injury. As an aspiring researcher, Mica hopes to address the health inequities that disproportionately affect marginalized groups to help improve the experiences and outcomes of diverse populations living with chronic pain. Her current research interests include cross-cultural research, pain validation, behavioural health equity, and assessment and treatment for pain in marginalized groups. Mica is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Canada Graduate Scholarships Master’s Award and the Lori Egger and Stephen Laut Graduate Scholarship in Clinical Psychology.
Melissa Pielech, PhD is a Pediatric Psychologist and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies in the School of Public Health at Brown University. She received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of New Mexico and completed her residency in Pediatric Psychology at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University. She also earned a Master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling and Art Therapy from Lesley University. Building on nearly ten years of clinical and research endeavors with pediatric patients with chronic pain, Dr. Pielech has developed unique cross-cutting expertise in understanding and treating pediatric pain and adolescent substance use. Her current research involves development of a brief behavioral intervention targeting pain coping and substance use for substance using teens undergoing wisdom tooth extraction as well as implementation science efforts to identify barriers and facilitators to increasing family involvement in adolescent and young adult opioid use disorder treatment.
Michaela Patton is a Clinical Psychology PhD student studying under the mentorship of Dr. Fiona Schulte. Michaela is originally from Washington and graduated from Oklahoma State University with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology. She earned her Master of Science in Clinical Psychology from the University of Calgary, where her master’s thesis project focused on comprehensive assessment of pain in survivors of childhood cancer. Michaela’s doctoral dissertation project will test an internet-delivered cognitive behavioral therapy for survivors of childhood cancer struggling with chronic pain. Michaela is also passionate about including patients as partners in her research.
Miranda is currently completing the fourth year of her PhD in Clinical-Developmental Psychology at York University. She is supervised by Dr. Rebecca Pillai Riddell. Miranda’s doctoral program of research is focused on understanding early caregiver-child relationships in the context of infant and toddler vaccinations. Specifically, she aims to understand how caregivers’ scaffold and support a young child’s ability to regulate their distress when experiencing pain. Miranda will be completing her pre-doctoral psychology internship this Fall (2021) at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital.
Morgan MacNeil is a full-time student enrolled in the Master of Science in Nursing program at Dalhousie University. She graduated from the Bachelor of Science in Nursing program at Dalhousie with distinction in the spring of 2019. Since 2017, Morgan has been an active research assistant in the MOM-LINC Lab at the IWK Health Centre, under the supervision of Dr. Campbell-Yeo. Morgan has been eager in learning new skills to advance her research knowledge, in hopes to carry out research of her own in the future. Morgan’s research area of interest is pain assessment and management in infants and children with intellectual disabilities. Morgan’s notable academic achievements include receiving numerous sources of funding for her master’s degree, receiving the Mary-Lou Ellerton Prize in Clinical Nursing (2019), and the Electa MacLennan Memorial Scholarship (2021). Her most prized accomplishment is working in a research field that will advance care for vulnerable populations, including her younger sister, who has Down syndrome.
Nadine is a PhD student at the University of Western Australia (Australia) and is also affiliated with Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (Melbourne Australia). She works clinically as a physiotherapist in the movement program, Kids Rehab Western Australia at Perth Children’s Hospital. The title of her PhD is: “Pain measurement for all young people with cerebral palsy: A best practice bio-psychosocial model”. Nadine is passionate about working in partnership with consumers and ensuring all people with cerebral palsy have access to best practice assessment and interventions for chronic pain. Her recent research has focused on movement interventions for children with cerebral palsy to decrease pain.
Nichaela (she/her) is a first-year MA student in the Clinical-Developmental Psychology program at York University. Her research takes place in the Opportunities to Understand Childhood Hurt (OUCH) lab, under the supervision of Dr. Rebecca Pillai Riddell. Broadly focused on pediatric pain, her particular research interests lie in exploring the use of novel technologies for the assessment and management of pain in preterm infants in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). Nichaela’s research has been supported by provincial funding through an Ontario Graduate Scholarship. She has also been awarded federal funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council through a Canada Graduate Scholarship (Masters). Prior to joining the OUCH lab, Nichaela completed her Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Psychology at York University. Additionally, she has worked clinically as a Behavioural Educational Assistant for the Peel School Board.
Natisha is an MA student in the Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology program at the University of Guelph, under Dr. Meghan McMurtry’s supervision. Her Master’s thesis is a scoping review on the measurement and conceptualization of coping in the pediatric chronic pain literature. She is also a research student in the Pediatric Chronic Pain Program at the McMaster Children’s Hospital. Previously, Natisha completed an undergraduate and Master’s degree in psychology at the University of Toronto where she examined the role of biological, psychological, and social factors on gender minority youth’s well-being. She also contributed to the development of cross-cultural interventions aimed at reducing negative appraisals of gender-nonconformity in children. Natisha is interested in applying the biopsychosocial model and her experience working with diverse groups to her current research to improve the quality of life and healthcare experience of youth with chronic pain and their families.
Neta Bar Am studied medicine at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Be’er-Sheva, Israel. She conducted an internship in Sha’are Zedek hospital in Jerusalem, where she also conducted my residency. Along with her clinical work she found lots of interest in treating the pain and anxiety of children in the emergency department and the clinical research of these topics. These days, she is conducting my postdoc at the laboratory of Dr. Jillian Miller, in the P.A.I.N.S lab, which is focused on pediatric anesthesia, imaging, and neuro-developmental science. Her goal is to gain a better understanding of the ways that acute and chronic pain integrates, and how, in combination with the emotional stress, it affects people later in their lives.
Nicole is a PhD student in Clinical Psychology at Dalhousie University, where she is supervised by Dr. Christine Chambers. She completed her BA in Early Childhood Studies at Ryerson University and an MEd in Developmental Psychology at the University of Toronto. Stemming from her research and volunteer experiences in pediatric health settings, her research interests within pediatric pain include interventions for procedure pain management and how knowledge translation can improve families’ access to evidence-based practices for pain management. Her current research is focused on understanding how partnerships between researchers, health professionals, and families can aid in knowledge translation and implementation activities to promote the dissemination and uptake of evidence to manage children’s pain.
Nicole is a PhD Candidate at the University of Melbourne and continues to work clinically as a Registered Nurse caring for sick children and their families. Her research focuses on exploring pain and pain management in hospitalised children. During her Master of Philosophy, Nicole engaged with key stakeholders to design and plan a study aimed at exploring children’s experiences of pain and pain management within the Paediatric Emergency Department. This was the first Australian study to utilise the draw, write and tell technique to capture children’s pain related experiences. The focus of her PhD is to examine current pain management practices within Australian Paediatric Hospitals, since the integration of Electronic Medical Record Systems (EMRs) to determine how effective pain management care is for children and their families. Nicole’s is also interested in seeking the perspectives of parents and children relating to their perceived role and benefits in using EMRs to enter their own pain data.
Dr. (PhD) Nynke van den Hoogen is a postdoctoral trainee in the lab of Dr. Tuan Trang at the Hotchkiss Brain Institute of the University of Calgary, Canada. Originally from the Netherlands, Nynke completed a BSc in Biomedical Sciences and a Research MSc in Fundamental Neuroscience at Maastricht University. She defended her PhD degree in April 2018 under supervision of Prof. Bert Joosten and Prof. Dick Tibboel. Nynke collaborated with the Department of Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology at University College London, where she spend six months performing electrophysiological experiments under supervision of Prof. Maria Fitzgerald. Nynke’s major research interest lies in unravelling the developmental pathways that underlie individual differences in pain perception and susceptibility. Her current research expertise is the consequences of procedural pain and opioid analgesia in early life, studied in preclinical models.
Newborns admitted to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) are frequently exposed to painful medical procedures in the absence of analgesia. One major barrier to adequately managing infant pain in NICUs is the lack of a reliable pain assessment tool. Current infant pain assessment tools mostly rely on broad behavioural indices of pain. No clinical pain assessment tool presently incorporates infants’ cortical responses to pain as a potential indicator for pain specificity. This is problematic as past research has demonstrated a variable relationship between infants’ pain-related cortical activity and their behavioural responses. Using more fine-grained and comprehensive measurements of both responses, the goal of my M.A. thesis was to examine the associations between behavioural and cortical indicators of pain-related distress following a painful medical procedure in hospitalized newborns. My Ph.D. dissertation will further my program of research by exploring parent influences on hospitalized newborns’ behavioural, physiological, and cortical pain-related responses.
Olivia Dobson completed her undergraduate degree in Psychology (Honours) at Acadia University in 2020. She is currently a Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology master’s student at the University of Guelph. Olivia is a member of the Pediatric Pain, Health and Communication Lab and is researching under the supervision of Dr. C. Meghan McMurtry. Olivia has a strong passion for inclusive healthcare and her research program aims to improve the health of children with developmental disabilities. Olivia is interested in investigating pediatric acute-procedural pain as well as fear and anxiety surrounding needle procedures. She is currently researching how needle-related pain management strategies and fear-reducing interventions can be better tailored to the needs of families with a child with an Autism spectrum disorder. Olivia aims to apply the family systems approach to her research and is highly interested in parent perspectives on preventing and managing their children’s acute pain.
Dr. Paulina Lim (she/her) is a NIH-funded F32 Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of California, Irvine Center of Stress and Health in the Department of Medicine, mentored by Drs. Michelle Fortier and Zeev Kain. Her current F32 project aims to understand cultural factors that contribute to pain communication and outcomes for linguistically minoritized families who present to the Emergency Department. Her research interests are focused on pediatric pain
equity, with a specific emphasis on developing and implementing equitable pain assessment and management strategies for minorized children. Dr. Lim earned her PhD in Clinical Psychology at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee and completed her pre-doctoral residency in General Child Psychology at the University of Washington/ Seattle Children’s Hospital.
Perri Tutelman is a PhD Candidate in Clinical Psychology at Dalhousie University and the IWK Health Centre under the supervision of Dr. Christine Chambers. She is also an incoming Pre-Doctoral Resident in Pediatric/Child Clinical Psychology at the Alberta Children’s Hospital. Perri’s research and clinical interests include pain in pediatric oncology, the use of social media for knowledge translation, and patient engagement in research. Her doctoral work is focused on examining the experience of pain in childhood cancer survivors using qualitative and experimental pain methods. She is the past trainee representative for the Canadian Pain Society and served as Co-Guest Editor of the recently published Canadian Journal of Pain Special Issue on Qualitative Research and Pain. Her research has been supported by several provincial and national funding bodies including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship program, Research Nova Scotia, and the Beatrice Hunter Cancer Research Institute.
Queenie Li is a University of Calgary Clinical Psychology student mentored by Dr. Melanie Noel. She holds a BSc in Biology from McGill University and a BSc (Hons) in Psychology and Women’s Studies from the University of Calgary. Queenie is dedicated to finding ways that we can live better together. She believes a key to achieving thriving communities is to support those in the most vulnerable positions, including children and marginalized individuals. As such, her breadth of research experience in psychology, public health, and education is connected by a focus on advocacy and justice. She is particularly interested in addressing critical gaps in prevention and intervention that center the influence of social factors on the mental health and functioning of youth and their families. Queenie is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the Alberta Strategy for Patient Oriented Research (AbSPOR).
Raissa is a nurse and researcher interested in advancing care for children with complex needs. She completed her doctoral degree at McGill University in 2021. Her research program was focused on the perspectives associated with the experiences of children living with medical complexity. During her Ph.D. program, she was the recipient of the David McCutcheon Pediatric Palliative Care Doctoral Fellowship and awarded the Doctoral training scholarship from the Fonds de Recherche Santé du Quebec (FRQ-S). She has completed a one-year postdoctoral fellowship at Shriners Children’s working with the creation of resources for self-management during the transition from paediatric to adult care and implementation of clinical frameworks for person-centred care. In 2023, she was awarded a Postdoctoral training fellowship from the FRQ-S, ranking #1 in the competition. She is presently a Postdoctoral Researcher at Université de Montréal working with paediatric pain management for children with medical complexity.
Rasha Gad got her bachelor degree in nursing in 2006, pediatric nursing master’s degree in 2013, and pediatric nursing PhD in 2019 at Mansoura University- Egypt. She was a PhD Research scholar at Case Western Reserve University (https://case.edu/) in the USA and a nursing observer at Cleveland Clinic in the USA. She is a pediatric nursing lecturer and researcher at Mansoura University, Egypt where she has been working as a pediatric nursing clinical instructor for 9 years then a clinical training coordinator for 3 years in undergraduate, postgraduate, internship, and technical nursing educational Programs through traditional and virtual online training. She also has been a member in staff development committee for staff nurses at Mansoura University Children’s Hospital. Her research on pain management started at primary level of health care to manage vaccination-related pain and continue to include other levels of care through managing procedure-related pain.
Rachel Moline is a 4th-year doctoral student in the Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology program at the University of Guelph. Her research, supervised by Dr. C. Meghan McMurtry, aims to help children during painful experiences, like needles, both directly and through interventions that empower parents to provide support. Supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellowship, her research reflects a biopsychosocial approach, seeking to harness the power of protective factors, including mindfulness. Research interests include parent nonverbal communication and cultivating parents’ ability to attune to their child and co-regulate their emotions during painful experiences. Her dissertation research is exploring a mindfulness intervention to help children and parents during child venipuncture procedures. She will be beginning her pre-doctoral residency in pediatric and child clinical psychology at Alberta Children’s Hospital in fall 2021.
Ryan Parsans is currently a PhD student working in the Centre for Pain Research at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom. His current research focuses on paediatric chronic pain, with a particular interest in the potential flourishing which may be associated with chronic pain, as well as Positive Psychology. Ryan completed his Master’s degree at Goldsmiths University of London where he conducted research on pain placebo and suggestibility.
Rebecca Fechner works as a senior physiotherapist for the Queensland Interdisciplinary Paediatric Persistent Pain Service in Brisbane Australia. She has worked with adults and young people experiencing chronic pain in both Australia and the UK for the last 20 years. Her passion for understanding how the development of body/mind connection through childhood experiences impacts upon adult functioning is driving her pursuit for better outcomes for those experiencing persistent pain. If she could have one wish, it would be to bring a biopsychosocial understanding of pain to schools so that our children can change the way the next generation understands and manages chronic pain.
Dr. Rebecca Lee is a post-doctoral researcher at The University of Manchester, UK.
During her PhD, she worked on the development of a multi-dimensional mobile health iPad application for children and young people to report their pain daily, called My Pain Tracker. My Pain Tracker collects data remotely on pain intensity, severity, location, emotion and interference. The tool has been used in several studies, exploring its reliability/validity, investigating children and young people’s administrative preferences for such tools and looking into how healthcare professionals interpret the in-depth pain data collected. More recently, Dr Lee has turned her attention to the ways in which new assessment and communication tools, like My Pain Tracker, can be implemented into clinical practice. The current aim of her research is to develop a behaviour change intervention to facilitate more effective pain conversations between professionals, children, young people and their parents particularly in paediatric rheumatology.
Randa is a doctoral student in Clinical Psychology at the University of Saskatchewan. She received her Honours B.Sc. degree in Psychology (Behavioural Neuroscience) with distinction from Concordia University. Her honours thesis focused on the association between social anxiety and predrinking among university undergraduate students. She received her M.Sc. degree in Psychiatry from McGill University, where she completed her thesis in alcohol consumption in adults with diabetes and comorbid psychiatric conditions. Currently, Randa’s doctoral dissertation focuses on the experiences of chronic pain, emotions, and substance use among adolescents. She is also working on a research project examining observer perceptions of children in pain.
Rayna Anderson is an honours student at the University of Calgary completing her BSc in Psychology. She is completing her honours thesis under the supervision of Dr. Kathryn Birnie focusing on a systematic review of psychological interventions on pediatric post-operative pain outcomes. Rayna’s research interests involve the prevention of chronic post-surgical pain in youth, as well as factors that contribute to the development of chronic post-surgical pain. She is also interested more broadly in the mobilization of pain care knowledge.
Rhiannon Joslin is a paediatric musculoskeletal physiotherapist whose clinical experience nearly spans two decades. She works within a paediatric multidisciplinary chronic pain team in England. Concurrently, she is also a lecturer in physiotherapy at the University of Southampton and is completing a part-time PhD. Her research explores what matters most to young people and their parents when receiving treatment for chronic pain within hospital services.
Roses Parker has Psychology degree and a clinical background in children’s cancer nursing. She has also worked frontline for the London Ambulance Service. She held research nurse positions in both the UK and New Zealand before commencing her PhD in February 2016. Her PhD investigated how parents of children with cancer manage their child’s cancer-related pain at home using mixed methods. She successfully defended her thesis in December 2018 and took some time off to have a baby. She now works as a Network Support Fellow for the Cochrane Collaboration working with 8 different review groups including the Pain, Palliative and Sensory Group.
Samantha Louie-Poon is a settler of Chinese ancestry based in Edmonton, AB. As a nurse, community activist, researcher, and poet, Samantha is passionate about storying the untold narratives of the Asian diaspora in so-called Canada. Samantha has a Bachelor of Science in Nursing and her clinical nursing background is in pediatric oncology/haematology and pediatric medicine. Samantha is currently a PhD Candidate at the University of Alberta where she is documenting the experiences of anti-Asian racism and exploring anti-racism strategies for child mental health knowledge translation using narrative methods. Her academic publications focus on anti-Asian racism, anti-racism, and radical imaginations in the area of child health, mental health and wellness, and knowledge translation. Samantha is excited to further her career in the area of anti-racism and children’s health through her upcoming Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Dalhousie University where she will explore racism and children’s pain.
Sam is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Psychology Department at the University of Calgary. She is passionate about exploring research related to the emotional well-being and pain of children and youth with complex health care and communication needs. She completed a BSc in Psychology at Western University, a MSc in Global Health at McMaster University, and a Doctorate in Rehabilitation Science at Queen’s University. Sam’s research interests related to pain involve many areas including intergenerational pain of veterans and their children, acute post-operative pain, and chronic pain of children with brain-based developmental disabilities. Sam is motivated to explore and understand the lived experiences of pediatric pain and advocate for the care, mental health, and participation of children and youth.
Sam is a MSc student in Medical Sciences at the University of Calgary (UCalgary), where she is cosupervised by Dr. Jillian Miller (Assistant Professor in Anesthesiology, Perioperative & Pain Medicine, UCalgary) and Dr. Catherine Lebel (Associate Professor in Radiology, UCalgary). Sam has been contributing to pediatric pain research at the Alberta Children’s Hospital since 2018. Her research interests include exploring neurobiological mechanisms and psychological factors underlying the development of pain symptomology in children and youth. Her MSc thesis explores the relationship between parenting behaviors, child brain development and somatic symptoms in children born to mothers who were pregnant during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sara Jasim is currently a PhD student in the Clinical Developmental Psychology, Neuropsychology Stream at York University, where she also attained her Master’s degree. Her master’s research examined the influence of repetitive behaviors on mental health in children and youth with autism spectrum disorders. With an unwavering interest in neurobiological mechanisms of behavior, her current research at the OUCH Lab focuses on unraveling the mechanisms subsuming infant pain processing. She has a special interest in how maternal factors, such as maternal mental health, influence infant pain responses by examining underlying physiological biomarkers of regulation. She is currently working in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) where she collects pain-related EEG signals during premature infant’s heel lance procedure as well as infant and maternal cardiac measures.
Sarah Wallwork is a Post-doctoral Researcher at the University of South Australia. She has a physiotherapy background (clinical) but has been working in pain research for the past 12 years. Her current research interests are in paediatric pain where she is investigating better ways to communicate with children about everyday pain and injury to foster the development of a contemporary and functional understanding of pain, injury, resilience and recovery in children from a young age.
Sharon Bateman is currently in her third year of a PhD in psychology at the University of Bath and a member of the Centre for Pain Research. She is exploring the challenges faced by adolescents with chronic pain and mental health symptoms to understand how these particular challenges might impact their functioning. Her research involves, a scoping review to map the current literature, a youth and parent longitudinal mixed-method study, and a clinician study to evaluate the clinician perspective on challenges to adolescents and any potential barriers to treating them. Sharon has enjoyed being a PICH trainee since beginning her PhD in 2018.
Shelly-Anne Li is a PhD candidate at University of Toronto’s Faculty of Nursing. She obtained a MSc in Health Research Methodology at McMaster University. Shelly-Anne is interested in understanding how organizational context (e.g., leadership, culture, resources) influences the implementation of evidence-based pain practices in hospital settings. Under the supervision of Dr. Bonnie Stevens, her dissertation work is to understand the perspectives of key stakeholders on how organizational context influences implementation strategies used to improve the uptake of evidence-based pain practices in the neonatal intensive care unit. Beyond the academic setting, Shelly‐Anne is a guideline development methodologist at the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario, and the research and quality improvement lead at University Health Network’s Al & Malka Green Artists’ Health Centre, where she applies her knowledge in research methods, program evaluation and implementation science.
Shaylea completed her Bachelor of Science in Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Toronto in 2016. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Clinical-Developmental Psychology at York University under the supervision of Dr. Rebecca Pillai Riddell in the Opportunities to Understand Childhood Hurt (O.U.C.H.) laboratory. She is interested in investigating the role of caregivers in infants’ and young children’s responses to acute pain and distress. Shaylea’s Master’s thesis (also completed in the O.U.C.H. laboratory) explored associations between parents’ mental health and parent-preschooler attachment relationships and highlighted parents’ emotional well-being as one of many factors that are important for children’s emotion regulation. Her dissertation research focuses on parent-toddler interactions during vaccinations. Specifically, it explores parents’ biological, behavioural, and psychological responses during toddler vaccinations and how these responses relate to toddlers’ regulation of pain-related distress.
Sophie Crouch is a doctoral candidate at the University of South Australia supervised by Dr. Sarah Wallwork and Prof. Sue Nichols. Her thesis aims to investigate how pain is socialised in early childhood through avenues such as caregiver responses to children’s pain/injury, and media (e.g., children’s TV, picture books). Her research is underpinned by the goal of aligning the development of children’s conceptualisations of pain and injury with contemporary pain science understanding.
Dr Scott Tagliaferri is a clinical exercise physiologist and research fellow at the Centre for Youth Mental Health at the University of Melbourne. Scott’s PhD focused on understanding profiles of adults with chronic back pain, identifying large subgroups of chronic back pain that were influenced by poor mental health. To build on his PhD findings, Scott has developed a keen interest in understanding the link between mental health and pain conditions in adolescents and emerging adults, as this presents as the opportune time to appropriately manage these conditions and support young people as they transition into adulthood. Scott’s research program currently aims to understand the reasons why young people with depression and anxiety experience pain at such high rates and how we can best support these young people.
My name is Spencer Epp, I am currently a master’s student in the field of Neuroscience at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I chose this program following completion of my undergraduate degree in health sciences largely because I wanted to continue to learn and explore clinical research. My work so
far has involved operating the world’s first repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation robot for treatment of chronic pain in youth. I am incredibly excited to continue to learn about child health and treatment of serious ailments, as I continue to interact and connect with the participants in this brain
stimulation study. Following my graduate studies, I am hoping to pursue a career in pediatric medicine, and this experience continues to be invaluable to me.
Tess Rugg is a PhD student at the Centre for Pain Research at the University of Bath in the UK. Her journey into pediatric pain research started during her MSc in Health Psychology, in which she undertook a Dissertation project focused on future perceptions of young people with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. This led to an interest in this area of developmental pain research, and prompted the focus on this area for her PhD. Tess’ PhD aims to understanding and assess identity formation in the context of young people living with chronic pain. She is keen on using novel and creative methods of data collection, such as Story Completion and Photo Elicitation, to generate data to understand how young people with chronic pain think about their identity, particularly in relation to pain. Tess looks forward to learning more about this area of research, and collaborating within the paediatric pain community
Thea is a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan School of Nursing studying with Dr. Terri Voepel-Lewis. Her pre-doctoral work is funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research and uses longitudinal data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (ABCD) to examine how sleep duration and quality affect relationships among adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), mental health, and persistent/recurrent pain across early adolescence. As a
PhD student, she has participated in several multidisciplinary research teams examining the biopsychosocial nature of single and multi-regional adolescent pain, as well as associations between family adversity and comorbid pain, sleep disturbance, and psychological symptom trajectories across adolescence. In addition to her research activities, Thea continues to work clinically as a pediatric nurse practitioner in school-based health centers across southeast Michigan.
Tolu Adetayo is pursuing her PhD in the Medical/Clinical Psychology Program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She conducts research in the Biobehavioral Pain Research Lab under the mentorship of Dr. Burel Goodin. Tolu is interested in assessing different environmental/social factors as potential risks or mitigators of chronic pain. She is particularly interested in examining pediatric pain outcomes in underrepresented and vulnerable youth. Her master’s thesis will examine the influence of various SES indicators on functioning and pain severity in a rheumatic pain population.
Tristan Phair, RN, BScN, is a nurse working in the pediatric emergency department at Children’s Hospital, Health Sciences Centre, Winnipeg. He graduated from l’Université de Saint-Boniface with his Bachelor’s in Science of Nursing in 2020. Tristan is currently pursuing a Master in Science of Nursing at the University of Ottawa. His thesis research will explore the experiences of loneliness of adolescents with chronic pain. Previously, Tristan’s experience in research has included working on an intergenerational study to counter social isolation and develop favourable interactions between preschool-aged children and nursing home residents to decrease loneliness, as well as a community health intervention to improve mental wellness for individuals accessing a food bank who are at risk of social isolation. Tristan has worked with his colleagues to disseminate their findings, presenting at conferences nationally and internationally. His research interests include social functioning, social inequity, social justice, and pediatrics.
Vina Mohabir (she/her) is a trainee in the iOUCH Pain Research Lab at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and completing her PhD at the University of Toronto in the Institute for Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation under the supervisor of Dr. Jennifer Stinson and Dr. Chitra Lalloo. Her
doctoral work will focus on the co-design and implementation of a health-related stigma intervention for youth with sickle cell disease using iCanCope, a pain self-management platform. Vina has lived with chronic pain since 15 and is a survivor of stage 3 breast cancer. Vina is passionate about sharing her
story and advocating for the unique needs of disabled, diverse and low-income youth living with pain. Vina was engaged as a patient partner in research as a teenager, which led her to her current career. She facilitates patient engagement in pain research, policy, education, and clinical practice in Canada and internationally.
Yi Wen (Jenny) Wang (RN, M.Ed, BScN) is a nurse, educator, and PhD student at the Ingram School of Nursing at McGill University. Her work draws from childhood ethics and arts-based methods to foster children’s voices, ensuring that health resources are created for children with children. She is particularly interested in integrating child health and pedagogy to create child centric educational health resources for hospitalized children. Under the supervision of Dr. Argerie Tsimicalis, Jenny’s Ph.D. research will be to co-design and develop a virtual reality software prototype to prepare children for surgery.
Y
oo Sun (Sunny) Jeong (RN, BScN, MBE) is a first-year Ph.D. student at the University of Toronto. Sunny graduated from the Ingram School of Nursing at McGill University in 2019, and from the Master of Bioethics program at Harvard Medical School in 2023. Under Dr. Jennifer Stinson’s supervision, Sunny hopes to continue to develop her research interests in improving pediatric healthcare delivery by developing and validating resources for pain management for children with chronic illnesses, such as cerebral palsy. Sunny aims to collaboratively co-develop these tools by directly working with these children to ensure their lived experiences are considered and captured. Specifically, Sunny hopes to contribute to high-quality pain research on the efficacy of non-pharmacological (i.e., music therapy) as an adjunct to pharmacological post-operative pain management.
Yvonne is a Ph.D. student in the Clinical Psychology program at Dalhousie University working with Drs. Christine Chambers and Sean MacKinnon. Her research is focused on the pain associated with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) and its treatments. Some of her research has explored the ways in which JIA treatments impact parents, and how parents’ pain cognitions can influence treatment adherence. More recently she has been interested in risk and resilience in the context of JIA pain, as well as the influence of personality and family factors. Yvonne has additional interests in patient engagement, open science, knowledge translation.
- Abigail Jones
- Adele Orovec
- Brittany Rosenbloom
- Charlie Kwok
- Daniela Ghio
- Diana Ohanian
- Fluer Baert
- Hadas-Nahman-Averbuch
- Ines Boujelben
- Jennifer Peters
- Ji Kwan Lee
- Justina Marianayagam
- Kendra Mueri
- Kimberly Brown
- Kim Opdensteinen
- Kudrat Mundi
- Laura Jones
- Lauren Elisabeth Harrison
- Leah Carrier
- LeAnne Revell
- Lexa Murphy
- Ligyana Korki de Candido
- Mallory Perry
- Mariana Bueno
- Marie-Catherine Mongenot
- Megan Greenough
- Megan Miller
- Megha Rao
- Mia McLean
- Mohammad Alqdimat
- Morgan Daffin
- Natalie Duffy
- Olav Aga Kidal
- Rachel Flynn
- Ruben Roy Brusi
- Sabine Soltani
- Shajenth Premachandra
- Sharon Shih
- Soeun Lee
- Somayyeh Mohammadi
- Tatiana Lund
- Tessa Wihak
- Tieghan Killackey
- Wen Zhang
- Wendy Gaultney
- Yalinie Kulandaivelu
- Yasmin Cole-Lewis