Our Team

Governance

Executive Committee
International Scientific and Medical Advisory Board
Steering Committee

Working Groups:

Bio-banking and Biomarkers
Diagnosis, Clinical Assessment, Trial Development
Epidemiology, Data Management and Study Design
Genetics & Epigenetics
Infection and Immunity
Trainee Development and Medical Education
Vascular Instabilities and Sleep Disturbances

Executive Committee

The mandate of the Executive Committee is to provide leadership, support, and oversight of the network’s development and on-going operations.

Alain Moreau PhD

Executive Committee Chair

Full Professor

Department of Stomatology, Faculty of Dentistry
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, Faculty of Medicine
Université de Montreal

Scientific Director

Open Medicine Foundation Collaborative Research Center at CHU Sainte-Justine/Université de Montréal
Viscogliosi Laboratory in Molecular Genetics of Musculoskeletal Disease
CHU Sainte-Justine Research Centre
Montreal, Quebec

Dr. Alain Moreau is a Full Professor in the Faculty of Dentistry (Stomatology Department), cross-appointed to the Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine Department in the Faculty of Medicine at Université de Montreal. He served as Director of Research and Chief Scientific Officer of Sainte-Justine University Hospital (2013-2016). Dr. Moreau was the Director of the Network for Canadian Oral Health Research – NCOHR (2016-2022) and he served as member (2010-2022) and vice-president (2012-2016) on the Advisory Board of the Institute of Musculoskeletal Health and Arthritis of The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). In 2019, Dr. Moreau was appointed Director of the Interdisciplinary Canadian Collaborative Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ICanCME) Research Network, another national research network funded by CIHR. He is an internationally recognized expert on molecular genetics of pediatric scoliosis. His discoveries led to multiple peer-reviewed papers, international conferences as a guest speaker, several awards as well as 72 patents covering innovative diagnostic tests and therapeutic molecules. Dr. Moreau is the cofounder and Chief Scientific Officer of Inception Therapeutic Inc. a start-up based in Montreal developing diagnostic tests for primary osteoarthritis and new disease-modifying osteoarthritis drugs. Dr. Moreau's main research interests target pediatric scoliosis and other complex adult diseases such as osteoarthritis, osteoporosis and myalgic encephalomyelitis.

Florence-Olivia Genesse BA MLA PhD Law Candidate

Executive Committee Member

PhD Law Candidate, Durham University

Florence-Olivia Genesse is a public academic, human rights advocate and a renowned scholar in law and feminist theory. As a Roszel C. Thomsen fellow, she obtained in 2022 her Masters degree from Johns Hopkins University. Her most recent article analyzes the experience and the specific harm that female patients endure in the context of clinical medicine and how sexism and gender bias in medicine can make the practice of care an incredibly dangerous experience for female patients. She is now a PhD Law Candidate and has been awarded several prestigious academic honors. In addition to academic excellence, Florence-Olivia worked extensively outside the classroom. She has, notably, served as a youth and gender consultant where she presented recommendations to Quebec’s Higher Education Minister to help guide the new legislation targeting sexual violence at the province’s universities and colleges.

Ms. Genesse is determined to give everything she has to offer to the ME community to lead the search for a diagnostic biomarker, to discover effective treatments and to give justice to the millions of patients who have been neglected by the medical community. The guiding thread of her activism and academic journey has ultimately been to connect ethical argument with democratic action and advocacy. It is with the greatest honour that she has accepted to serve on the Executive Committee of the ICanCME Research Network to use her voice at the table as a source of hope in bridging the gap between the medical research community and the patient community.

Kathleen Kerr MD

Lecturer

Department of Family and Community Medicine

Assistant Professor

Dala Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto

Staff Physician and Research Liaison

Environmental Health Clinic, Women's College Hospital, Toronto, Ontario

Dr. Kathleen Kerr completed her medical degree at the University of Toronto in 1971, and her Diploma in Environmental Health at McMaster University in 1996. She works at the Environmental Health Clinic at Women's College Hospital in Toronto as well in private community practice.

She has ongoing research interests in the human health effects of pesticides and persistent environmental toxicants. She has participated in two systematic reviews on the health effects of pesticides, one on heavy metals in sweat and a chart review of Environmental Health Clinic patients. She has published papers on cancer and non-cancer effects of pesticides, functional impairment in chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and multiple chemical sensitivity, heavy metals in sweat and an overview of Gulf War illness, an illness with parallels to ME/CFS. She was a co-author of a publication entitled: Gulf War Illness - Evaluation of An Innovative Detoxification Program, a US Department of Defence funded clinical trial. She was the CFPC representative on the Public Health Agency of Canada working group to develop Clinical Practice Guidelines on Lyme Disease. She has presented at numerous workshops at OCFP and CCFP on these topics.

Abdolamir Landi MD PhD

Executive Committee Member

Research Scientist

Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology

Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry

University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta

Dr. Landi, MD, PhD, is a senior scientist and principal investigator, who works at Professor Michael Houghton's laboratory in the Dept. of Medical Microbiology & Immunology at the University of Alberta, Canada. He has been a member of the ME/CFS committee of the Alberta Medical Association and Research & Medical Advisor to National ME/FM Action Network, Canada. He has been working on the immunologic aspects of ME/CFS since 2010.

Paul Lohnes CPA

Director, Finance and Administration, CATALIS Québec

Saint-Lazare, Quebec

Paul Lohnes is a bilingual financial professional with experience in the private, non-profit and public sectors. He is currently Director, Finance and Administration with CATALIS Québec (Recherche Clinique Québec). Paul was chief executive of the Canadian Audit & Accountability Foundation, a research and education not-for-profit in Ottawa. His previous positions include Vice-President Inspections and Human Resources at the Canadian Public Accountability Board, Director of Auditing Standards at the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (now CPA Canada), and Audit Partner with KPMG in Montreal and The Netherlands.

Paul's involvement with ME has been as a loving caregiver to his wife, Christiane Garcia, who has been seriously ill with ME for 40 years. Paul was Co-President of l'Association Québécoise de L'Encéphalomyélite Myalgique (AQEM) from 2019 to 2022. He provided administrative and moral support to the ICanCME patient group in 2019 and assisted with the CIHR research proposal. Paul commends Dr. Alain Moreau for spearheading a remarkable collaborative effort to bring researchers, clinicians, and patients together to discover how to diagnose and treat ME.

Luis Nacul MD MSc PhD

Executive Committee Member

Medical Director and Research Director

Complex Chronic Diseases Program, BC Women's Health Centre
Vancouver, British Columbia

Clinical Associate Professor

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM)
London, UK

Dr Luis Nacul has been researching ME/CFS internationally, with research partners and collaborators in North America, Europe and Australia. He was the principal investigator for the feasibility studies on establishing a disease-specific post-mortem tissue bank and Biobank for the study of ME/CFS and the London lead for the CFS/ME Observatory project. He has been the Director of CureME Research Programme at the International Centre for Evidence on Disability, Clinical Research Department, at the LSHTM in the UK. In addition to serving as co-PI for ICanCME, he is the Chief Investigator of the UK ME/CFS Biobank and the NIH funded project 'Longitudinal immunological and virological study for ME/CFS biomarker discovery', and is co-investigator in an Australia project to establish the first Biobank for ME/CFS in Oceania. Dr Nacul has wide experience in epidemiology and public health, including in public health genomics, as well as clinical, as a generalist and also as a ME/CFS Specialist, having worked in this capacity in the UK and Canada. In addition to clinical and research work, with emphasis on chronic and disabling diseases, he has contributed to teaching of epidemiology and public health at both the London and Cambridge Universities in the UK and internationally.

Margaret Parlor BA LLB

Executive Committee Member

President, National ME/FM Action Network

Ottawa, Ontario

Margaret Parlor B.A. LL.B. joins the ICanCME Research Network as president of the National ME/FM Action Network, a patient-based Canadian charity that has been working on behalf of Canadians with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and Fibromyalgia since 1993. Among other accomplishments, this organization spearheaded the development of diagnostic and treatment protocols for ME and for Fibromyalgia and hosted an international research and clinical conference. The organization has been recognized in the Canadian House of Commons and Senate. Ms. Parlor has been involved in writing a sourcebook for teachers of students with ME or FM, a guide for applying for CPP-Disability benefits, statistical reports on ME and FM in Canada, and quarterly newsletters. She has made presentations at conferences on statistics and on patient needs and has met with numerous federal officials. Ms. Parlor is a retired public service manager who worked at the municipal and federal levels. Her career focused on data and policy analysis. Her family has been affected by ME and FM.

Alison Rae

Executive Committee Member

CEO, Action CIND

Toronto, Ontario

Alison Rae is Board Chair and CEO of a Canadian national registered charity called Action CIND. CIND stands for Chronic Immunological and Neurological Diseases and the focus of the charity is ME, FM, MCS/ES and CFS. Alison was an IT Project Manager at a large financial institution for many years until being disabled by ME and FM a number of years ago. She has also struggled with MCS/ES for most of her life. She has been an advocate for CIND for several years as well as promoting May 12th International Awareness Day and serving on the board of the National ME/FM Action Network for over two years. She assisted with the creation of a Treatment Centre vision document in 2009 that has now led to the creation of Action CIND.

Alison is very active in promoting education of the illnesses and running webinars on a variety of topics of interest to the community. Under her leadership, Action CIND has promoted advancing research in Canada. The charity launched their first annual #Run4ME in 2019 to raise funds for ME research which was a great success. She has been involved with prior grant applications and with the ICanCME grant. She has been part of the patient representative team that has help to launch ICanCME.

Scott Simpson BA CWC

Executive Committee Member

Co-founder, Millions Missing Canada

Toronto, Ontario

Scott Simpson (BA, CWC) is a long-time patient advocate. Scott worked with Dignitas International, a Canadian medical humanitarian non-governmental organization, to increase access to life-saving HIV medications and health care in Malawi, Africa. After that success, Scott turned his attention to research on domestic HIV intervention programs with Dr Trevor Hart and the Toronto Metropolitan University HIV Prevention Lab and is the co-author of three published papers about their findings.

Scott co-founded Millions Missing Canada, a non-profit organization advocating for access to health care and treatment for Canadians living with ME. He is also a member of the Health Quality Ontario Patient and Family Advisory Council, and is a founding member of the Patients for Patient Safety Canada Alliance.

Scott is a counseling trainer and has a private counseling practice, Remedies Online Counseling, that is focused on supporting people who are medically marginalized. Scott is the host of the podcast Medical Error Interviews. He has been living with HIV since 1998 and was the first person living with HIV to compete at the triathlon world championships. Scott has been living with ME since 2012.

Walter L Siqueira DDS PhD FCAHS

Executive Committee Member

Dean and Professor, College of Dentistry University of Saskatchewan

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

Dr. Siqueira (h-index = 41) leads the Salivary Proteomics Research Laboratory. His program in proteomics, diagnostics, and therapeutic using saliva is unique in Canada. His background as a dental clinician and basic scientist has enabled him to integrate basic science with applied clinical research and promote knowledge translation.

Dr. Siqueira is considered an international authority in the field of salivary research. Dr. Siqueira's scholarship is impressive, with over 130 publications and more than 50 lectures in universities and at conferences globally.

Dr. Siqueira has been awarded several prestigious teaching and research honors. He was a recipient of the W.W. Wood Award for Excellence in Dental Education by the ACFD. He received the 2012 Salivary Researcher of the Year Award from IADR. Also, he received the Visiting Professorship Award from the CADR. Dr. Siqueira also received the prestigious CIHR New Investigator Salary Award. In 2018, he received from Western University the title of Faculty Scholar. This award title recognizes the complete scholar who has maintained an excellent record in teaching and research. In addition, Dr. Siqueira is an IADR Distinguished Scientist Award Recipient, the most prestigious international award in oral health science and Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.

International Scientific and Medical Advisory Board

The mandate of the ISMAB is to ensure that the network’s research activities meet the highest standards and objectives are achieved.

Chris Armstrong PhD

ISMAB Member

Director – Melbourne ME/CFS Collaboration

Open Medicine Foundation
University of Melbourne
Australia

Dr. Armstrong completed his PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Melbourne where he was the first to apply metabolomics to the field of ME/CFS (published in 2015), the initial study was on blood and urine, the follow-up study was on stool and gut bacteria in 2017. In 2017 and 2018, Dr. Armstrong began several new projects, extending his Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) metabolomics knowledge to several international research groups working on ME/CFS. In 2019 he was recruited to join Open Medicine Foundation, as a Science Liaison to communicate between the Collaborative Research Centers as well communicating between them and the broader ME/CFS community. As part of this role, he also works with Stanford University as a Visiting Scholar, to continue his research. Over the course of 2018 and 2019, he developed a hypothesis that ME/CFS results from increased production of reactive nitrogen by-products of energy metabolism and plans to continue to test his hypothesis.

Jonas Bergquist MD PhD

ISMAB Member

Professor
Director CRC for ME/CFS
Chief Medical Officer for OMF

Biomedical Center, Uppsala University
Sweden

Professor Dr Jonas Bergquist, MD, PhD, is Full Chair Professor in Analytical Chemistry and Neurochemistry at the Biomedical Centre, Department of Chemistry at Uppsala University, Sweden, Adjunct Professor in Pathology at the Department of Pathology, School of Medicine, University of Utah, USA, and Distinguished Professor in Precision Medicine, Binzhou Medical University, Yantai, China. He is also the director of the clinical collaborative research centre in Uppsala (together with Harvard Medical School and Stanford University) with focus on myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME). Professor Bergquist's group is continuously developing general analytical tools for molecular diagnostic screening and discovery of biomarkers of pathological states. Technologies include all important links: identifying relevant clinical applications, invasive in-situ sampling of complex samples, advanced sample pretreatment, multidimensional liquid-based separation, high resolution mass spectrometry, and multivariate data analysis. Professor Bergquist among other things focus to explore the neuroimmunological involvement in neurodegenerative diseases by using proteomics and metabolomics with a special interest in cerebrospinal fluid and hard-to-reach tissue studies. Professor Bergquist has currently published over 550 papers, with around 10 000 -13 000 citations (h-index of 59 in Web of Science and 72 in Google Scholar).

Sonya Chowdhury

ISMAB Member

Chief Executive, Action for M.E.

United Kingdom

Sonya Chowdhury has been Chief Executive of UK-based charity, Action for M.E. for 10 years. Action for M.E. provides direct information and support, individual advocacy and healthcare services to children and adults with M.E. while also supporting families and professionals working with them. The Charity also works to raise the profile of ME and secure change for the future through its public affairs and research activity. Its ambitious Breakthrough-ME research strategy also includes the first Genetic Centre of Excellence, a virtual collaboration, which it has launched in partnership with Prof Chris Ponting, MRC Human genetics Unit, University of Edinburgh. Sonya is a Co-Investigator on the world’s largest ME study, DecodeME and Chairs its Management Group as well as a founding, Co-Chair of the World ME Alliance. Sonya also has a son with M.E. who became ill a year after she joined the Charity.

Nancy Klimas MD

ISMAB Member

Chair, Department of Clinical Immunology
Director, Institute for Neuro-Immune Medicine
Assistant Dean for Research, Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Osteopathic Medicine

Nova Southeastern University
Florida, USA

Nancy Klimas, M.D. is a Professor of Medicine in the Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Osteopathic Medicine and Chair of the Department of Clinical Immunology at Nova Southeastern University. She is the Dean of Research for KPCOM and established the Institute for Neuro Immune Medicine (INIM), at Nova Southeastern University.

In partnership with the Miami Veteran's Administration Medical Center's Gulf War Illness (GWI) research program, the INIM is a multi- disciplinary research and clinical institute that takes a systems biology approach to understanding complex medical illnesses, such as Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) and Gulf War Illness (GWI).

Dr. Klimas is Professor Emerita, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, a diplomat of the American Board of Internal Medicine, a diplomat in Diagnostic Laboratory Immunology, and Director of Clinical Immunology Research at the Miami VAMC. She has achieved national and international recognition for her research and clinical efforts in multi-symptom disorders including ME/CFS and GWI, was the past president of the International Association for CFS and Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (IACFS/ME), a professional organization of clinicians and investigators, and a past member of the Health and Human Services (HHS) CFS Advisory Committee.

Eliana Lacerda MD PhD

ISMAB Member

CureME team - Research Leader

Clinical Research Department
Faculty of Infectious & Tropical Diseases
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
London, UK

Dr. Eliana Lacerda has focused her research activities on clinical and epidemiological aspects of ME/CFS, since 2007, and co-founded the CureME team at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (London, UK). Additionally, Dr. Lacerda co-created the UK ME/CFS Biobank (UKMEB), the first disease-specific biobank dedicated to ME/CFS research, of which she is the Clinical Director. The UKMEB, have provided biosamples and data to research groups at universities around the world, including in the UK (Cambridge, Oxford, University College London, Dundee, Surrey, and Cardiff); Brazil (University of São Paulo); Spain (Universidad Católica de Valencia); Israel (Weizmann Institute of Science), Austria (Institute of Biomedical Science, Graz), Germany (Charité), the US (The Jackson Laboratory, UMass Amherst, Whittemore Peterson Institute, Stanford University), and Australia (Garvan-Weizmann Centre for Cellular Genomics).

Dr. Eliana Lacerda has been the Vice-Chair of EUROMENE, a network involving participants from 22 European countries, which provided guidelines for epidemiological, clinical and biomarkers research, in addition to diagnosis of and health care provision to people with ME/CFS. Dr. Lacerda is the PI for a new research project (NIH funded) on HHV6 viral reactivation in people with ME/CFS and with Long Covid in the UK.

Neil McGregor PhD

ISMAB Member

Clinical Associate Professor

Dental School, University of Melbourne
Melbourne, Australia

Dr. Neil McGregor is a Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Neil gained his PhD at the University of Sydney in 2000 and has published over 70 papers in peer reviewed journals. He was a co-editor of the Journal of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome until it was replaced by the current journal. His academic research involves the science of metabolomics, microbiology, genetics and inflammatory mediated disease.

Peter Rowe MD

ISMAB Member

Professor of Pediatrics
Director, Chronic Fatigue Clinic, Johns Hopkins Children's Center

Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine
Maryland, USA

Dr. Rowe is a graduate of Trinity College, University of Toronto, and the McMaster University School of Medicine. His work has focused on the association between treatable circulatory disorders and ME/CFS, and the overlap of these conditions with connective tissue laxity and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. He has directed the Chronic Fatigue Clinic at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center since 1996, where he is the inaugural recipient of the Sunshine Natural Wellbeing Foundation Chair in Chronic Fatigue and Related Disorders.

Carmen Scheibenbogen

ISMAB Member

Prof. Dr. med. Carmen Scheibenbogen

Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin | Institut für Med. Immunologie
Berlin, Germany

Carmen Scheibenbogen is hematooncologist and professor of clinical immunology at the Institute of Medical Immunology at Charité Berlin. She is co-founder of the COST-funded European network for ME/CFS EUROMENE, the Charité Fatigue Centre (https://cfc.charite.de) and the Post COVID Network (https://pcn.charite.de). She has co-authored more than 200 peer-reviewed papers with a focus on ME/CFS, T cell immunology and cancer vaccines.

Steering Committee

The mandate of the Steering Committee is to provide guidance on strategic priorities and goals of the network.

Alain Moreau PhD

Steering Committee Chair

Full Professor

Department of Stomatology, Faculty of Dentistry
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, Faculty of Medicine
Université de Montreal

Scientific Director