Vi Dam

Vi Dam completed her BSc in nursing at the Université de Montréal and is a registered nurse in Quebec and Ontario. She is currently enrolled in the INDI PhD program, Pure Science at Concordia University where she graduated with an MSc (2015) from the Department of Exercise Science. Her past nursing experience includes working in the cardiology unit at Ottawa’s Hôpital Montfort. More recently, she has worked as a research nurse for studies conducted at the McGill University Nutrition and Performance Laboratory. Ms. Dam has had the opportunity to train under experts in the areas of age and obesity-related dysfunction, chronic diseases, and diabetes research at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. Under the supervision of Dr. Sylvia Santosa at PERFORM’s Clinical Analysis Suite, she is now investigating how obesity-related immune function in fat tissue affects metabolism and future disease risk such as insulin resistance and cardiovascular disease.
 

Jessica Murphy

Jessica Murphy received a BSc and MSc in nutritional science from McGill University, and is currently a PhD student in Concordia’s Individualized Program. She is conducting her research under the supervision of Dr. Sylvia Santosa and Dr. José Morais within the Department of Exercise Science and PERFORM’s Clinical Analysis Suite. Her graduate work is investigating whether the period of obesity development (childhood-onset versus adult-onset) influences the way adipose tissue and skeletal muscle respond to a lifestyle weight loss protocol.
 

Julian Chiarella

Julian Chiarella obtained his B.Sc degree in 2013 from Queen’s University in Kingston (Ontario) with a major in Psychology and Life Sciences. He is presently finalizing his M.Sc. studies at the same institution and I will be starting his PhD in Clinical Psychology at Concordia University this September. HIs research interests lie in neuroimaging in the context of mental health and underlying epigenetic processes. For his Master’s thesis, he is studying the neural and epigenetic correlates of depression and trauma in adolescents. He is extremely grateful to have received the PERFORM doctoral award, which he will use to support his PhD studies in which he will be further trained in PET and fMRI imaging as well as in lifestyle measures. Specifically, at PERFORM, he will be studying the role of the serotonin 1A receptor in the neural processing of negative emotions, attentional control and physical fitness.
 

Oren Weiner

Oren Weiner received his B.A. in Psychology from Ryerson University in 2011. He then worked full-time during the subsequent year as an overnight polysomnographic technician in a diagnostic sleep medicine clinic. Mr. Weiner began his graduate training at Concordia in 2012. He is currently completing a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology under the supervision of Dr. Thanh Dang-Vu. His research program uses EEG to examine the cross-frequency coupling (CFC) of distinct brain oscillations during sleep in relation to cognition and overnight memory consolidation between healthy and cognitively impaired older adults. Mr. Weiner’s research will also incorporate multi-modal neuro-imaging data obtained using MRI, PET, and MEG scanning. An overarching aim of his research is to provide evidence for using measures of brain activity during sleep as non-invasive bio-markers of cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease, with the goal of advancing both the diagnosis and longitudinal monitoring of neurodegeneration in the elderly.
 

Jessica Murphy

Jessica Murphy received a BSc and MSc in nutritional science from McGill University, and is currently a graduate student in Concordia’s Department of Exercise Science. She is conducting her research under the supervision of Dr. Sylvia Santosa within PERFORM’s Nutrition, Obesity and Metabolism Laboratory. Her graduate work will investigate whether the period of obesity development (childhood-onset versus adult-onset) influences the metabolic and cellular responses to a lifestyle weight loss protocol.

Amanda Rossi, BSc, Msc 

Amanda Rossi is a PhD candidate in the Individualized Program in the Faculty of Arts and Science and a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Vanier scholar. Her doctoral research focuses on the impact of physical activity and blood pressure on the development of cardiovascular disease and mortality. Throughout her graduate studies, Ms. Rossi has conducted research at the University of Copenhagen (Copenhagen, Denmark) and University College London (London, UK) and is affiliated with the Montreal Behavioural Medicine Centre. In 2011, Ms. Rossi founded the Concordia University Let's Talk Science site- a not-for-profit, volunteer organization aimed at improving science literacy in youth through engaging and inspiring hands-on science activities. 

Halina Bruce, M.A. 

Halina Bruce’s research interests focus primarily on geriatrics and life-span development in the context of attention and cognition and their effect on activities of daily living. More specifically, Halina’s work at the University of Ottawa examined the role of attention in driving behaviors of older adults diagnosed with early Alzheimer's disease. Currently, her graduate work examines whether dual-task training (combining a cognitive training task with a motor task) will increase mobility for hearing impaired adults as a result of training gains. The central premise behind the study is based on the Scaffolding Theory of Aging (STAC), which states that as neural challenges and functional deterioration increase across the lifespan, behavior is maintained at a relatively high level due to compensatory scaffolding. Her work aims to extend the STAC in positing that age-related deterioration of sensory and motor systems can also benefit from scaffolding mechanisms and will lead to increased enhancement activities. 

Dmitri Sitnikov, M.Sc. 

Born in the Soviet Union, Dmitri Graduated from the Medical Academy in St-Petersburg, Russia. He worked as a clinical microbiologist for 3 years before moving to Montreal where he did a masters in microbiology. Dmitri then worked for a few years as a research assistant and research associate in Molecular Cell Biology, followed by Protein Chemistry. Later he joined Caprion Proteomics developing methodology for a sample preparation platform for MS analysis. He also managed a sample prep platform and a few CRO projects related to biomarkers in cancer. He has been involved in 5 publications related to his work, two of which he wrote as principal author. Dmitri joined Concordia in 2013 where he has been enrolled in a PhD program with the department of Chemistry in the lab of Dr. Dajana Vuckovik.