Current Members
Jennifer Brownrigg
Research Administrative Assistant
Jennifer provides administrative support for grant submissions, human resources, web presence and general administration for the HERO group since 2021. She joined the OHRI's Kidney Research Centre in 2016. Previously responsible for IT (Information Technology) and communications in the not-for-profit sector, Jennifer brings years of administrative experience to her role.
Lisa Masucci
Senior Clinical Research Associate
Lisa's research interests include methods for conducting economic evaluations, real-world evidence, and decision-analytic modelling. She holds a MSc degree in health services research, specializing in health outcomes and evaluation from the University of Toronto. She is currently a PhD candidate in the health technology assessment program at the University of Toronto.
Yelena Petrosyan
Methodologist II
Yelena joined the team in March 2023 and is currently working on Organ Donation and Transplantation Research. She is an experienced health services researcher with expertise in quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection, implementation, and evaluation. She is skilled in planning, leading, and conducting a wide range of complex projects related to administrative records, sample surveys, and programs, providing advice on statistical methodology, as well as conducting evidence synthesis, indirect treatment comparisons, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses.
Emily Thompson
Clinical Research Assistant III
Emily has been working part-time for Kednapa since 2021, providing valuable support for patient engagement projects and economic evaluations related to chronic diseases such as cancer and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Currently, they are working on updating an early economic model for CAR-T therapy in adults with relapsed/refractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia (r/r ALL). They are also involved in the I2I grant project (exact name to be confirmed), which involves the development of a model for pediatric ulcerative colitis as part of the IBD genome project. Emily is a highly qualified epidemiologist with an MSc in Epidemiology and a BSc in Mathematics from the University of Ottawa.
Min Xi
Clinical Research Assistant III
Min is currently working on a micro-costing study of four implementation strategies focused on HIV self-testing in Canada, as well as estimating health care costs for people living with HIV in Ontario. Min is a clinical research assistant with expertise in health economics and a focus on cost-effectiveness analysis. She holds an MSc in Health Services Research and Health Technology Assessment from the Institute of Health, Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto and a BSc in Global Health from the same institution.
Alyssa Grant
Clinical Research Assistant II
Currently, Alyssa is involved in several projects, including Understanding preferences for substance use health services for problematic alcohol use during the COVID-19 pandemic, Economic evaluation of a strategy to assess low-risk trauma patients using the Canadian C-spine rule and selectively transport patients without immobilization, Prevalence and factors associated with antidepressant use in Ontario: a retrospective, population-based cohort study, The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on patient distribution, service utilization, outcomes, hospital costs and revenue, and staff experience at The Ottawa Hospital, and Improving the Identification of Sepsis Using Population-based Health Care Data.
Alyssa completed her Master of Science in Epidemiology at the University of Ottawa in 2020 and is currently in her last year of the PhD Epidemiology program. Alyssa's research interests focus on aging, ocular and pharmaco-epidemiology, and health economics.
Chau (Cacy) Tran
Clinical Research Assistant I
Cacy is currently providing assistance with an economic analysis on pediatric ulcerative colitis and other projects as needed. She is a recent graduate from the University of Ottawa with an Honours Bachelor's degree in Biomedical Science and a minor in Business Management. Cacy has dabbled in various research areas such as digital health integration with eHealth Innovations UHN and phytochemical analyses with Dr. Harris's Lab at the University of Ottawa.
Past group members
Anubhav Agarwal (Clinical Research Assistant II)
Anubhav worked on several HERO group research projects from 2019 to 2024. Including a real-world observational study on the clinical outcomes and health system costs associated with leukemia and lymphoma care in Ontario, a threshold economics analysis of one-day donor evaluation for kidney transplantation among end-stage kidney disease patients in Ontario and a systematic review of economic evaluations of CAR-T cell therapies for patients with hematological and solid malignancies.
Golnaz Amidpour (BioCanRX Summer Student, Summer 2023)
Golnaz worked on a project focused on the Health Technology Assessment for Cancer Biotherapeutics in Dr. Thavorn's team as part of the BioCanRx Summer Studentship Award.
Naazish Shariff (Clinical Research Assistant II, 2021-2023)
Naazish worked on the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) funded project Understanding preferences for substance use health services for problematic alcohol use during the COVID-19 pandemic.
