• Dr. Danièle Behn Smith is Métis from the Red River Valley and Eh Cho Dene from Fort Nelson First Nation. She has the honour and privilege of working as British Columbia’s Deputy Provincial Health Officer, Indigenous Health. She works alongside Dr. Bonnie Henry and other team members at the Office of the Provincial Health Officer to uphold the inherent rights of Indigenous peoples, unlearn and undo systemic white supremacy and racism and advance true reconciliation.

    Behn Smith brings expertise as a family physician with training in emergency medicine (MD, CCFP-EM); functional medicine (Certified Functional Medicine Practitioner); and population and public health (MPH). She has practiced medicine in rural and remote Indigenous communities across Canada.

    As both a physician and health leader, her work recognizes self-determination as the foundation of health and wellness among First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples, and the importance of Indigenous approaches and healing systems.

  • Professor Niranjan “Tex” Kissoon, MB BS, FRCP(C),FCCM, FACPE is the University of British Columbia BC Children’s Hospital (UBC BCCH) Endowed Chair in Acute and Critical Care Global Health. He is also the Past President of the World Federation of Pediatric Critical and Intensive Care Societies (www.wfpiccs.org) and Professor, Pediatrics and Surgery (Emergency Medicine) Department of Pediatrics at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC. He is the President of the Global Sepsis Alliance (https://www.global-sepsis-alliance.org/) and co-chair of the Pediatric Surviving Sepsis Campaign as well as Vice-President of the Canadian Sepsis Foundation; Advisory Board Member of Sepsis Alliance USA and the African Sepsis Alliance. He is the Chair of World Sepsis Day, the International Pediatric Sepsis Initiative. Dr. Kissoon is the recipient of the 2020 Drs. Vidyasagar and Nagamani Dharmapuri Award for his sustained exemplary and pioneering achievements in the care of critically ill and injured infants and children globally, The BNS Walia PGIMER Golden Jubilee Oration 2015 Award for major contribution to Pediatrics In India, Postgraduate Institute Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India. 2015, the Society of Critical Care Master in Critical Care (their highest award), the American Academy of Pediatrics Distinguished Career Award and the University of British Columbia Outstanding Academic Performance (OAP) for 2018 calendar year, Faculty of Medicine. He also received the University of West Indies Medical Alumni Association Canadian Chapter Giving Back. Advancing Medical Excellence Distinguished Service Award In Recognition of Exceptional Service in National and International Paediatric Critical Care, 6 May 2018.

  • Dr. Rochwerg is an intensivist and researcher based at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. He leads multi-national randomized controlled trials in sepsis and acute hypoxemic respiratory failure. He is chair-elect for the Internal Medicine Section at the Society of Critical Care Medicine and chair-elect for The Canadian Critical Care Trials Group. He is vice-chair for the international Surviving Sepsis Campaign, an Associate Editor at Critical Care Medicine and ACP Journal Club and serves on the editorial board at CHEST. In addition to this, he supports many national and international societies in developing clinical practice guidelines in the field of critical care.

  • Ms Vollman is a Critical Care Clinical Nurse Specialist and Consultant. She has published & lectured nationally and internationally on a variety of pulmonary, critical care, prevention of health care acquired injuries including pressure injury and CAUTI/CLABSI’s and other HAI’s, work culture and sepsis recognition & management. She serves as a subject matter expert on these topics for the American Hospital Association and Michigan Hospital Association.

    She currently serves as the president of the World Federation of Critical Care Nurses: Notable Inductions and Appointments:

    • College of Critical Care Medicine (2004)

    • American Academy of Nurses (2009)

    • Board of Directors NPIAP

  • Nuala Devlin is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Nursing and Midwifery with over 20 years of clinical experience in critical care nursing. Research Interests: Her research focuses on supporting nursing students in clinical practice, electronic professionalism, and evidence-based nursing education. Teaching roles: Programme lead for ANCCP, and teaching across multiple BSc(hons) and MSc programmes.

  • Dr. Joanna Hart is a practicing pulmonary and critical care physician at the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphiaarea Veterans Medical Center. Her research broadly focuses on improving the serious illness experience for patients and families, using an approach that recognizes serious illness affects families, not just patients. Dr. Hart has particular research interests in how patients, families, and clinicians communicate with one another; the role families play in supporting patients with serious illnesses; how health systems integrate family members into care; and complex, value-sensitive shared decision making.

  • Prof.(Dr). Anil Kumar Chillimuntha, is the Executive Vice President, Professor & PhD Research Guide, at METAS Adventists Group of Colleges, Universities, Hospitals & Schools at Ranchi, Jharkhand State, India. He’s also volunteering as the Chief Operating Officer of AWR 360 Health, USA. He has 25 years of Medical, Management & Teaching experience. He is a Government of India appointed Certified National NABH Quality Assessor for Indian hospitals since 2009; Member of CAHO & ISQua; Fellow of ISQua - FISQua; He’s also a Quimpro Certified Qualitist. Member of Indian Society of Critical Care Medicine, Indian Association of Respiratory Care, India.

  • David Williamson, B.Pharm, M.Sc, Ph.D. is a Full Clinical Professor an at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the Université de Montréal, as well as a Clinical Pharmacy Specialist at Sacré-Coeur Hospital in Montreal, Canada. He’s also a Clinical Scientist at the Sacré-Coeur Hospital Research Center. His research program focuses on the optimal use of medications in the ICU.

  • Dr. Na Li is an Associate Professor and digital health scientist in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary. Her research applies artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and methodologies to enhance learning health systems using high-quality, large-scale electronic healthcare data. Dr. Li earned her PhD in Statistics from Western University in 2016 and completed her postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Computing and Software at McMaster University in 2020. She joined the University of Calgary in 2021, focusing her research on bridging the gap between data-driven insights and practical healthcare solutions in health services research.

  • Kali Dayton, DNP, AGACNP, is a critical care nurse practitioner, host of the Walking Home From The ICU and Walking You Through The ICU podcasts, and critical care outcomes consultant. She is dedicated to creating Awake and Walking ICUs by ensuring ICU sedation and mobility practices are aligned with current research. She works with ICU teams internationally to transform patient outcomes through early mobility and management of delirium in the ICU.

  • Fabio S. Taccone, MD, PhD, is the Head of the Department of Intensive Care of the Hopital Universitaire de Bruxelles (HUB) in Belgium and Professor of Emergency Medicine at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB). He is also the Past Chair of the Neuro-Intensive Care section of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM) since 2013 and Chair of the International Symposium of Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (ISICEM) since 2022.

  • Carolyn McCoy is a Registered Respiratory Therapist and is the Director of Professional Practice for the Canadian Society of Respiratory Therapists. In her role, she supports the growth and evolution of the respiratory therapy profession in Canada and internationally.

  • Elizabeth is a Professor and Associate Dean (UG studies) at the University of Alberta, Faculty of Nursing. She is Ambassador of the World Federation of Critical Care Nurses (WFCCN). Elizabeth’s research focuses on the pathophysiology of critical illness and sepsis, and on improving critically ill patients’ outcomes through non-pharmacologic interventions and patient engagement.

  • Dr. Michelle Kho is a Professor in the School of Rehabilitation Science at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. As a clinician-scientist, she is a member of the Physiotherapy Department and cares for patients in the intensive care unit at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton. Dr. Kho studies complex rehabilitation interventions to improve outcomes in critical illness survivors.

  • Shane English is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine (Critical Care) at the University of Ottawa and an Intensivist in the Department of Critical Care at The Ottawa Hospital, where he also serves as Medical Director of the Intensive Care Unit – Civic Campus. As a Senior Scientist at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, Dr. English leads a research program dedicated to aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH). He served as the international lead for the SAHaRA RCT, a large multi-centre international trial investigating the impact of red blood cell transfusion strategies on neurologic outcomes, in collaboration with the Canadian Critical Care Trials Group. He also co-leads an international working group focused on establishing a Core Outcome Set for aSAH.

  • Thomas Piraino is a Registered Respiratory Therapist (RRT), FCSRT, FAARC, educator, and consultant. He serves as an Adjunct Lecturer for the Department of Anesthesia at McMaster University. In addition to authoring research papers, editorials, and textbook chapters, he is the editor of The Centre of Excellence in Mechanical Ventilation Blog. He also serves on the editorial board of Respiratory Care.

  • Andreas Xyrichis is an ICU nurse and Reader in Interprofessional Science at the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery & Palliative Care, at King's College London University, UK. A thrice King's graduate, his programme of research centres on strengthening interprofessional collaborative practice for safe and quality care. He is the Chief Investigator for FEARLESS ICU, an NIHR-funded study examing teamwork practices in ICUs across the UK. Xyrichis is an elected member of the N&AHP Committee of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM) and the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Interprofessional Care.

  • Dr. Jennifer Tsang is an Associate Professor of Medicine and the Regional Deputy Research Director of Internal Medicine Residency Program at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. She is an intensivist and the Executive Director and Chief Scientist of the Niagara Health Knowledge Institute at Niagara Health. She is a member of the Royal College Council and the Research and Evaluation Advisory Board at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. She is a member of the Knowledge Translation Committee of the Canadian Critical Care Society. She leads a research program to build research capacity in community hospitals in Canada.

  • Srinivas Murthy is a pediatric intensive care physician at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. His academic and clinical interests are in innovative clinical trials, global health, and climate change.

  • Dr. Michael Goldfarb is a critical care cardiologist and clinician-investigator at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Dr. Goldfarb’s research is focused on improving patient and family-centered care and outcomes in the ICU and post-ICU settings.

  • Dominique Piquette is an adult critical care staff physician at the Department of Critical Care Medicine of Sunnybrook, a Scientist at the Sunnybrook Research Institute, an Associate Professor at the Interdepartmental Division of Critical Care Medicine, University of Toronto, and a Research Scholar at the Wilson Centre (for research in health profession education). Dr. Piquette’s research interests are primarily focused on medical education in critical care medicine at the postgraduate and post-certification levels, and on research education.

  • Major Ian Ball is a Medical Specialist with 1 Canadian Field Hospital of the Canadian Armed Forces. His military area of expertise is chemical weapons defence. He does research and teaching with Defence Research Department of Canada and allied countries. In the civilian world, he is the Chair of Critical Care Medicine at Western University, the Critical Care lead for Ontario Health West and the Medical Director of the London Police Tactical Team.

  • Annie Heiderscheit, PhD., MT-BC MFT is Professor of Music Therapy at Anglia Ruskin University and Director of the Cambridge Institute for Music Therapy Research in Cambridge, United Kingdom. She has over 30 years of experience as a clinical music therapist and has been conducting music listening intervention research with colleagues from leading institutions as Mayo Clinic, Yale University, Indiana University, University of Minnesota, and Cambridge University Hospital.

  • Thomas Rollinson is a senior physiotherapist in intensive care at Austin Health in Melbourne, Australia. He is in the final year of his PhD Candidature at the University of Melbourne investigating exercise and recovery following critical illness. His research is focused on physical activity in patients with critical illness, muscle wasting in critical illness with sepsis, early exercise interventions and biomarkers of catabolic state.

    He has participated as a site investigator on some of the largest, international randomised trials of ICU rehabilitation conducted, including the eStimCYCLE, TEAM, and CYCLE trials. His work has won awards from the Society of Cachexia and Muscle Wasting Disorders, the Australian Physiotherapy Association, the University of Melbourne, and Austin Health.

  • Dr. Shannon Fernando is a critical care physician at Lakeridge Health, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Critical Care Medicine at Queen's University. Dr. Fernando is interested in epidemiological and health services research pertaining to critically ill adults, and particularly long-term outcomes in survivors of critical illness. He is also involved in numerous clinical trials, and is the principal investigator of the BLUSH research program, interested in evaluating adjunctive methylene blue in septic shock.

  • Dr. Heather O’Grady completed her PhD in Rehabilitation Science at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. She is now completing a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Niagara Health Knowledge Institute (Niagara Health, St. Catharines, Ontario). Her research interests are focused on rehabilitation, knowledge translation and patient-engaged research in the context of critical illness.

  • Dr. Cook is a Distinguished Professor of Medicine in the Departments of Medicine, and Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact at McMaster University. As a practising critical care consultant at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton, Dr. Cook’s studies have helped to reduce the toll of death and disability of critical illness worldwide. While Academic Chair of Critical Care Medicine at McMaster and St. Joseph’s Healthcare, her rigorous randomized trials have influenced practice and policy in the ICU. Dr. Cook was a founding member and 2-term Chair of the Canadian Critical Care Trials Group. Her pioneering research helped to improve research methods and outcomes for critically ill patients. As a 3-term Canada Research Chair in Knowledge Translation, her work on advanced life support and preventing serious complications have shaped protocols for critically ill patients globally.  Dr. Cook’s studies on research ethics and end-of-life care have helped to promote respect for persons and humanism in healthcare. The 3 Wishes Project she developed is a culmination of many studies on the morally complex subject of dying while dependent on life support. Since its inception in 2013, the 3 Wishes Project has been adopted in many settings to elicit and implement personal wishes of dying patients to honour their dignity, ease grieving families, and call forth clinician compassion. With 1000 peer-reviewed publications and unparalleled additional academic contributions, Dr. Cook has received numerous national and international honours for her scientific leadership, expert mentorship and dedication to the practice of critical care medicine.

  • Dr. Bagshaw is a Professor and Chair, of the Department of Critical Care Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Alberta and Clinical Department Head for Critical Care Medicine, Edmonton Zone, Alberta Health Services, in Edmonton, Canada. He trained at the University of Calgary (Internal Medicine, Critical Care Medicine, Master of Science Epidemiology) and the Austin Hospital (Critical Care Nephrology) in Melbourne, Australia. Dr. Bagshaw works as a staff intensivist in both the General Systems ICU at the University of Alberta Hospital and the Cardiovascular Surgical ICU at the Mazankowski Alberta Heart Institute. Dr. Bagshaw is supported by a Canada Research Chair in Critical Care Outcomes and Systems Evaluation.

  • Prof Di Stephens was the inaugural Director of ICU at Royal Darwin Hospital from 1998 to 2016. In 2017 she moved into the role of Medical Director of the National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre (NCCTRC) drawing on her disaster medicine experience with the Bali Bombings in 2002 and 2005, deployment into Iraq with the RAAF in 2004 and disaster medicine training and experience with Cyclone Winston when she worked in Fiji in 2016. In January 2022 Prof Stephens was appointed into the role of Foundation Dean of the new Charles Darwin University School of Medicine.

  • Manoj Lalu is an Anesthesiologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine at The Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa. He co-leads the National Preclinical Sepsis Platform, funded by Sepsis Canada, which is implementing innovative approaches to improve the translation of therapies from the laboratory to early phase clinical trials. These approaches include multilaboratory studies, knowledge synthesis, and patient engagement in preclinical research to enhance rigor and relevance.

  • Dr. Mikkelsen is the Associate Chief Medical Officer of Critical Care at the University of Colorado Hospital. Dr. Mikkelsen's mission is to ensure that exceptional, compassionate care is delivered to critically ill patients and their family members through outstanding, multi-disciplinary teamwork, the application of evidence-based care, and systematic study to optimize our performance.

  • Melissa Kandel, OTR/L, BCPR is a graduate of the Indiana University School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences Occupational Therapy program. She is board-certified in Physical Rehabilitation by the American Occupational Therapy Association and has 29 years of experience as an OT in a variety of settings including acute care, subacute care, outpatient, pediatrics, and home health care. She has been with Duke University since 2007 and currently serves as an Assistant Manager in the Acute Division of the Rehabilitation Services Department co-supervising a team of OTs who provide hospital-wide services. She is the course director for the Occupational Therapy in Acute Care course at the Doctor of Occupational Therapy division of Duke University School of Medicine. Melissa serves on research projects regarding the impact of intensive rehabilitation on patients with congestive heart failure and with the BETTER study to research how to best support patients with a traumatic brain injury in their transition back to the community. She is the Director of the Acute and Critical Care OT Fellowship through AOTA which she established in 2015 and has served as a member of the AOTA Roster of Fellowship Reviewers since 2017. She has also been an invited speaker at multiple national and regional conferences.

  • Dr. Gideon Johnson is a critical care registered nurse and Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in nursing education at the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery, and Palliative Care, King’s College London. He also serves as the Social Media Associate Editor for Nursing in Critical Care. His research centres on family engagement and innovations to prevent and manage delirium in the ICU. Dr. Johnson recently completed a PhD developing and evaluating a novel family-led intervention to support person-centred delirium care and now leads the Critical Illness Brain Dysfunction Survivorship (CIBS+) programme in the UK.

  • Dr. Amy Dzierba is a clinical pharmacist scientist and Director of Pharmacology Research for the ASPIRE (Acute Respiratory Failure & Sepsis Precision Interventions to Raise Health Equity (ASPIRE) Program. Dr. Dzierba is active in national organizations and serves as the Secretary of the Society of Critical Care Medicine.

  • The focus of Dr. Amaral's research is on improving quality of care for critically ill patients. Dr. Amaral works within two streams to improve quality: communication, to prevent errors and improve efficiency; and quality assurance, which involves measuring quality and developing novel models for implementing evidence-based medicine.

  • Prof. Niall Ferguson is Professor in the Interdepartmental Division of Critical Care Medicine, Department of Medicine, at the University of Toronto, with cross-appointments in the Department of Physiology and the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation. He is a practicing Intensivist and Clinician-Scientist at the University Health Network and is the Medical Director of the Toronto General Hospital Medical-Surgical ICU. He is a Senior Scientist in the Toronto General Research Institute and Director of the Toronto General Hospital Clinical Research Unit. Dr. Ferguson’s research investigates treatments for patients with acute hypoxemic respiratory failure with a focus on clinical trials in mechanical ventilation and extra-corporeal life support. He has published more than 300 papers listed on PubMed and his H-index is over 90. Dr. Ferguson is the Chair for Critical Care Canada Forum, Canada’s national critical care conference. He is a frequent invited speaker at national and international meetings, having given over 450 such talks.