Carmel Hilal Carmel is a Research Associate on the Exposure team. She holds a master’s degree in occupational and environmental health (specialized in Occupational Hygiene) from the University of Toronto, with a background in Chemical Engineering. Her research interests lie in the assessment of occupational exposures for occupational epidemiology and industrial hygiene, and design and evaluation of effective exposure controls. She is currently working on assessing historical exposures in Toronto’s subway system. Carmel is also a co-investigator of a project funded by Workplace Safety Insurance Board (WSIB) for assessing the use of US national exposure databases to improve compensation and prevention in Ontario workplaces.
Fanni ErosFanni is a Research Associate on the Surveillance team. She holds a master’s degree in Epidemiology from the University of Toronto and an MD and PhD (specialized in reproductive medicine) from Semmelweis University. Her main research interests are related to reproductive health of female workers, gender differences in occupational disease risk and occupational exposures and disease risk among healthcare workers. Fanni is currently working on evaluating the risk of non-cancerous outcomes among paramedics and other public safety personnel and assessing the risk of reproductive cancers among female workers in the Occupational Disease Surveillance System.
Jeavana SritharanJeavana is a Scientist leading the Occupational Disease Surveillance Program (ODSP) at OCRC, and an Assistant Professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. She holds a PhD in Medical Science (Occupational Epidemiology) from the University of Toronto and her doctoral studies involved the use of multiple large population datasets to examine the relationship between prostate cancer and occupational risk factors. She currently leads the ODSP, a unique system of over 2 million Ontario workers, that can identify and monitor trends of occupational disease. She works with the surveillance team to examine various cancers and non-malignant diseases within this system. More recently, her research program was expanded to include COVID-19 and opioid-related harms. Jeavana’s research interests focus on the Ontario workforce, examining patterns of occupational disease, sex-differences, high-risk occupations and industries, and emerging health outcomes.
Jill MacLeodJill is the Manager of the OCRC team. She holds a Master of Public Health in Epidemiology from the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. Prior to assuming the Manager role, Jill played a key role in the development of the OCRC’s Occupational Disease Surveillance Program. Now, as a manager, she is actively involved in shaping the strategic development of the center and providing strong leadership within the team.
Lily YangLily is a Research Associate on the Exposure team. She holds a Master of Public Health from Queen’s University. Her research interests lie in environmental health and occupational exposures. At OCRC, Lily is the project coordinator for the Radon in Ontario Workplaces study. She also collaborates with knowledge translation projects including website design and event planning.
Linh NguyenLinh is a Research Associate on the Exposure team. She holds a PhD in Environmental Sciences (specialized in Occupational & Environmental Exposure) from the University of Toronto. Her research interests lie in the assessment of occupational exposures for occupational epidemiology and industrial hygiene. Linh’s doctoral studies successfully developed a valuable screening tool for qualitative exposure monitoring studies and, for the first time, documented occupational exposures to flame retardants and plasticizers among e-waste workers and nail technicians in Ontario. At OCRC, Linh continues to pursue her interest in exposure assessment research. She is currently working on managing Ontario Mining Exposure Database (OMED), which contains >100,000 historical exposure measurements from Ontario mines and developing a silica job-exposure-matrix for the mining industry using measurements from OMED. Linh is also a co-investigator of a project funded by Workplace Safety Insurance Board (WSIB) for assessing the use of US national exposure databases to improve compensation and prevention in Ontario workplaces.
Louis EverestLouis is a Research Associate on the Surveillance team. He holds an MPH in Epidemiology from the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. His research interests include research methodology, Bayesian statistics, as well as data management and analysis. At the OCRC, Louis is working on a project examining the impact of unmeasured confounders in the Occupational Disease Surveillance System.
Marjorie PagcuMarjorie is the Analyst of the OCRC team. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, with a major in Accounting, and a Bachelor’s degree in Nursing from the Philippines. She has over 10 years of experience in administration, project coordination and management, skilled in financial planning, budget preparation and analysis. She works in coordination with the OCRC Director and Manager in managing the financial affairs of the centre, and in overseeing the allocation of financial resources. In addition to providing project and program support, Marjorie plays a key role in facilitating effective communication among the Centre, its partners, and other networks at Ontario Health to maintain the centre’s operational efficiency . She is passionate about occupational cancer research and takes great pride in using her exceptional skills to support the efforts of the OCRC in establishing cancer-free workplaces.
Nathan DeBonoNathan is a Scientist leading epidemiologic research at the OCRC. He also holds a faculty appointment in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. He was previously with the Monographs Program at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, France. He also worked as the Principal Investigator of a study of cause-specific mortality at an automotive electronics manufacturing facility in Huntsville, Alabama in collaboration with the United Autoworkers (UAW) union. He is a former trainee with the U.S. National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health’s (NIOSH) doctoral training program in Occupational Epidemiology.
Paul DemersPaul is the Director of the OCRC, as well as a Senior Scientist with Ontario Health and a Professor with the Occupational and Environmental Health Division of the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health. He has a PhD in Epidemiology and an MSc in Industrial Hygiene, both from the University of Washington in Seattle. Paul is internationally recognized for his expertise on the health effects of workplace exposures and has sat on many expert panels, including the International Agency for Research on Cancer working groups that evaluated carcinogens such as dusts and fibres, firefighting and formaldehyde. He has extensive research experience and accomplishments, including his past leadership of “CAREX Canada,” a national workplace and environmental exposure program. Over his academic career he has held numerous research grants, supervised many graduate students, and has published extensively.
Prathna Patel Prathna is a Research Assistant on the Exposure team. She holds a Bachelor of Public Health from the University of Waterloo. Prathna is actively involved in various research and knowledge translation activities, including the Radon in Ontario Workplaces project, where she played a vital role in the collection of data and results, and the Respirator Fit Study where she often travels with the fieldwork team for sampling across Ontario. She is also currently focused on data entry into the Ontario Mining Exposure Database (OMED).
Rachel Tyli Rachel is a PhD student on the exposure team. She holds a Bachelor’s of Applied Science (Mechanical Engineering) from the University of Waterloo. Her current research interests lie in investigating exposures. Her previous experience includes successfully building a state-of-the-art respiratory personal protective equipment (PPE) testing lab at the University of Toronto, Dalla Lana School of Public Health which sparked her current research interests in occupational health. Rachel is currently working on a project investigating respirator fit the “Validation of respirator fit testing for emergency workers during simulated life support tasks” and the Border Services Project. She also has a vested interest in science communication having been on CBC marketplace and pursuing content creation as a Junior Fellow at Massey College.
Stephanie ZiembickiStephanie is a PhD candidate at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health in the University of Toronto and works with the Exposure team. She holds an MPH in Occupational and Environmental Health from the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on diesel exhaust exposure and health effects in the Canadian construction industry. At OCRC, Stephanie is currently working on updating a job-exposure matrix for diesel engine exhaust, developing automated crosswalk models for a job-exposure matrix, and investigating the risk of cancer and chronic disease associated with diesel engine exhaust exposure within the Occupational Disease Surveillance System. Stephanie also works as a research associate on an occupational cancer feasibility study amongst border service officers.
Tanya NavaneelanTanya is a Senior Research Associate on the Surveillance team. She holds a MSc in Epidemiology and Community Medicine from the University of Ottawa. Her research interests are in cancer epidemiology and the social determinants of health. She has previously worked in cancer surveillance and cancer analytics at Cancer Care Ontario/Ontario Health. At the OCRC, Tanya’s work focuses on the Occupational Disease Surveillance System (ODSS) which contains occupational and health outcome data for over 2 million Ontario workers. In addition to data management for the ODSS she is also working on applying job-exposure-matrices to the surveillance system to assess relationships between occupational exposure levels and health outcomes.
