| Canadian Society of Pharmacology and Therapeutics |
Board of directors
Dylan Burger, PhD (Ottawa, Ontario) - President
Dylan Burger (PhD, ISHF) is a Senior Scientist at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa (Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine). His research focuses on understanding the molecular underpinnings of diabetes and hypertension and their associated cardiovascular complications. In particularly he has been active in the study of extracellular vesicles as markers and mediators of vascular and renal injury for more than 10 years. He has authored more than 70 manuscripts and has received several awards including the 2016 Canadian Society of Nephrology New Investigator Lectureship and the 2018 University of Ottawa Department of Medicine PhD Scientist Award. He is the current Chair of Communications for the International Society of Hypertension. Dr. Burger is a founding member of The Lancet Commission on Hypertension and Associate Editor for the European Heart Journal and the Journal of Extracellular Vesicles.
Jill Rourke is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Mount Allison University and Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Cell Signaling and Pharmacology. Her responsibilities include teaching undergraduate courses in biochemistry, signal transduction and pharmacology. She is passionate about creating empowering opportunities to advance undergraduate experiences in biomedical research. Her research interests include G protein-coupled receptor signaling, with emphasis on endocrine signaling and the interplay between classical receptor ligand signaling and modulators derived from metabolites and common food components.
Brad Urquhart, PhD (London, Ontario) - Past-President
Brad Urquhart is Associate Professor in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology and Associate Dean, Basic Medical Sciences Undergraduate Education at Western University. Brad has previously served on the CSPT scientific program committee and is currently the treasurer of CSPT. His research investigates mechanisms for variability in drug response and toxicity in kidney disease.
Rithwik Ramachandran, PhD (London, Ontario) – Awards Committee Chair
Rithwik Ramachandran is a molecular pharmacologist and an expert in the study of non-canonically activated G protein coupled receptors (GPCRs). Dr. Ramachandran’s work is highly interdisciplinary extending from the basic sciences into the clinical realm. Through understanding molecular features of various important drug targets, Dr. Ramachandran has been able to successfully develop precision pharmacology approaches for various diseases. In addition to conducting pioneering research, Dr. Ramachandran’s research program is also an outstanding training environment for the next generation of Canadian scientists. Dr. Ramachandran’s research trainees consistently produce high quality publications known for their experimental and conceptual depth and their work has been consistently published in the top-tier journals in his field.
Khaled S. Abdelrahman, BPharm, PhD (Vancouver, British Columbia) – Scientific Programing Committee Chair
Dr. Khaled Abdelrahman is an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia and an investigator at the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health. He is also a licensed pharmacist with over 13 years of patient care experience, which continues to inform his translational approach to research and his commitment to improving therapeutic outcomes in neurodegenerative diseases.
Dr. Abdelrahman holds a BSc in Pharmacy and an MSc in Pharmacology. His PhD research at the University of Calgary focused on the molecular mechanisms underlying cerebrovascular dysfunction in type 2 diabetes, followed by postdoctoral training at the University of Ottawa, where he investigated G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR)-targeted therapies for neurodegenerative diseases. His research program explores how dysregulated GPCR signaling in glial cells contributes to impaired cerebral blood flow and memory loss in Alzheimer’s disease. His work on metabotropic glutamate and muscarinic receptors has provided new insights into sex-specific disease mechanisms. He has authored over 44 peer-reviewed publications and secured major national funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), and the Alzheimer’s Society of Canada. Dr. Abdelrahman is the recipient of multiple prestigious salary awards from CIHR, Alberta Innovates, and Michael Smith Health Research BC, as well as accolades from both the Canadian Society of Pharmacology and Therapeutics (CSPT) and the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET). He serves as the Communication Officer for ASPET’s Molecular Pharmacology Division and is a Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (JPET) Editorial Fellow.
Thomas J. Velenosi PhD (Vancouver, British Columbia) – Treasurer
Dr. Velenosi received his PhD in pharmacology and toxicology from Western University. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship in the Laboratory of Metabolism at the National Cancer Institute (National Institutes of Health), and is currently an assistant professor in the UBC Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences. The Velenosi lab is focused at the intersection of pharmacology and metabolomics, using pharmacometabolomics to deepen our understanding of drug treatment response and toxicity during cancer therapy. His lab applies mass spectrometry-based metabolomics, lipidomics and stable-isotope metabolic flux analysis to identify and characterize biomarkers and therapeutic targets. Their approach is to determine the mechanisms of metabolic biomarker production and response to drug treatment using highly translational cancer models.
David Juurlink, MD, PhD, FRCPC (Toronto, Ontario) – Director-at-Large & Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada Liaison
David Juurlink is the head of the Division of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology at both Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and the University of Toronto, where he is a Professor of Medicine, Pediatrics, and Health Policy, Management and Evaluation. He is also a consulting medical toxicologist at the Ontario Poison Centre at the Hospital for Sick Children and a Senior Scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences. Dr. Juurlink serves as Chair of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons Examination Committee in Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology. He also maintains an active research program in the area of drug safety, with areas of special interest including medication safety, adverse drug events, drug-drug interactions and the epidemiology of suicide and deliberate self-poisoning.
Amit Bhavsar, PhD (Edmonton, Alberta) - Outreach Committee Chair
Amit Bhavsar is an Assistant Professor and Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in the department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Alberta. Dr. Bhavsar has a long-standing interest in anti-microbial resistance. His doctoral studies were in novel antimicrobial target discovery in Eric Brown's lab, and his postdoctoral training studied bacterial pathogenesis in Brett Finlay's lab. Dr. Bhavsar's lab studies the molecular mechanisms of how bacterial effector proteins subvert the immune system. This work will produce anti-virulence targets that exert less selective pressure for the development of resistance. This approach provides a precise alternative to antibiotic use.
