Matthieu holds a PhD in cognitive psychology. He worked for three years in a renowned French company in the energy sector, after which he co-founded Adoc Talent Management, in 2008. Head of the strategic and international development, recruitment consultant and training consultant for Adoc, he was also nominated AERES (now HCERES) expert to assess French graduate schools.

Bilingual Présentation

Louise Demers is Professor at the École de réadaptation de la Faculté de médecine de l’Université de Montréal. She is also Director and Associate Vice-Principal of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, where she is responsible for financial support and professional development of graduate students. Until June 2020, she was the Director of the École de réadaptation, overseeing the careers of professors and students’ success in the occupational therapy, physical therapy and rehabilitation sciences programs.

Louise obtained her Bachelor of Science in Occupational Therapy in 1985 at the Université de Montréal and worked for 10 years as a clinician in geriatric rehabilitation. She obtained an M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences (rehabilitation option) and completed her education in 2001 with a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship in epidemiology at McGill University. She became a scientist at the Research Center of the Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montreal, where she is still active. She has held a career investigator award from the FRQ-S from 2001 to 2013, and served at the CIHR Institute of Aging and at the Quebec Network for Research on Aging.

Her research interests include outcome measurement, assistive technology and caregivers needs with close to 120 peer-reviewed articles over the last 20 years. Her research has been funded by several agencies, including the CIHR, the FRQ-S, and the US National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation. Louise was a founding member of the international Consortium for Assistive Technology Outcome Research, and contributed to the advancement of the field of assistive technology outcomes measurement with improved instruments and techniques available to researchers, service providers, and policy-makers. She is currently active in Canada’s technology and aging network AGEWELL Network Centers of Excellence, contributing to the substantive research on technologies and services that help aging populations and their family caregivers.

Isabelle Gélinas, PhD, is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the School of Physical and Occupational Therapy at McGill University. She is a researcher at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Rehabilitation in Montreal (CRIR) and a member of the Candrive Research Team, interested in driving in the elderly. Her research focuses on community rehabilitation in support of the social participation of adults and elderly people with disability. Her research program focuses primarily on issues related to different forms of transportation mobility, including driving, to enable community participation for adults with disability and older adults. This includes approaches to screening, ecological evaluations, interventions, and the impact of the use of different modes of transportation on the health and the engagement in community life for her clients. She is working in close collaboration with different partners including clinicians and researcher at an international level to develop evidence-based approaches that are clinically relevant. She has also developed a web-based graduate certificate program on driving rehabilitation.

Marie-Hélène Raymond has been an occupational therapist since 1999. She practiced mostly in home care, and obtained a doctoral degree in Rehabilitation Science at Université de Montréal in 2016. She is passionate about knowledge translation and quality improvement in rehabilitation, while considering the perspectives of various stakeholders. She now works as a scientific advisor at the Institut national d'excellence en santé et en services sociaux, providing advice on best practices for elderly and disabled persons.

Dr. Mahadeo Sukhai is the world’s first congenitally blind biomedical research scientist. Mahadeo is Director of Research and Chief Inclusion and Accessibility Officer for the CNIB (Canadian National Institute for the Blind), having previously served as a researcher at the University Health Network in Toronto. In his role at CNIB, Mahadeo leads a significant research program focused on social determinants of health and inclusion for people living with sight loss in Canada. He also is responsible for organizational employee culture-building strategy related to inclusion, accessibility and employee wellness. Dr. Sukhai is the Principal Investigator for and co-author of "Creating a Culture of Accessibility in the Sciences," a book based on his groundbreaking work on access to science within higher education, and serves as the principal investigator for national projects to understand the student experience for persons with disabilities, and to examine accessibility and inclusion within science education and healthcare. Dr. Sukhai co-founded IDEA-STEM, an organization dedicated to accessibility in science education, and NOVA, the international Network of researchers with Visual impairments and their Allies, a new professional society with the mission to improve accessibility and inclusion in the biomedical sciences for researchers with vision loss.

Institut national canadien pour les aveugles (INCA)
www.idea-stem.ca
www.inovascience.org

Dorothée Charest-Belzile holds a doctorate in psychology from Université Laval. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Education of the Université du Québec à Montréal. Her work focuses on the services offered to families in vulnerable situations and the support provided to those who work with them, and is carried out in collaboration with the university, clinical, and government sectors. She also works as a psychologist in child psychiatry. The practical and clinical application of research, as well as consultation with the community, is at the heart of her approach. Given her interest in organizational governance, she has served on various committees and councils in the university environment throughout her career. She has been a member of the Student Intersectoral Committee of the Fonds de recherche du Québec since 2016 and has served as its president since 2019.