Dr. Kristin Connor is an Associate Professor of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease in the Department of Health Sciences at Carleton University where she runs an interdisciplinary and translational research programme (www.connorlab.ca). She is passionate about improving and supporting maternal, fetal and child health. Her expertise lies in understanding how early life nutrition, including hidden hunger, and maternal health states influence maternal and pregnancy health, and shape the developmental and health trajectories of the fetus and child. Her research interests focus on novel ways to predict individuals at-risk for adverse pregnancy outcomes, suboptimal development, and later chronic disease, and novel interventions to optimise maternal health and early developmental trajectories to reduce the incidence of adverse pregnancy outcomes, poor child growth, and chronic diseases in later life. Amongst other roles, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute for Human Development, Child and Youth Health, serves on Council for the Society for Reproductive Investigation, and is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease. She is funded through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Molly Towell Perinatal Research Foundation, and industry, amongst others.

Dr. Sandra Davidge is the Executive Director of the Women and Children’s Health Research Institute and Distinguished University Professor at the University of Alberta. She is a Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Physiology with expertise in early intervention and prevention strategies to change lifecycle trajectory. As an international leader in pregnancy research, Dr. Davidge has been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC), Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (CAHS) and the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (London). Her research program investigates cardiovascular function as it relates to: 1. complications in pregnancy (preeclampsia and maternal aging) and 2. mechanisms for developmental origins of cardiovascular disease. This work includes a focus on understanding the long-term impact of pregnancy complications on maternal and offspring cardiovascular health to develop early intervention and prevention strategies for improving long-term health. With her team of trainees, Dr. Davidge has published over 300 original peer-reviewed manuscripts and review articles in these areas. Dr. Davidge serves on many national and international advisory panels and serves on the editorial board for the American Journal of Physiology, Hypertension and Biology of Sex Differences. She has had many advisory and leadership roles including past Board Chair for the Maternal, Infant, Children, Youth Research Network (MICYRN), along with many continuing roles as one of their Board members. In addition, Dr. Davidge is an international Advisory Committee Member for the Center of Excellence in Perinatal Research for the University of Mississippi Medical Center and is a Board member of the Molly Towell Perinatal Research Foundation and the Medical Advisory Board for the Preeclampsia Foundation Canada.

Dr. Claudio Delrieux Full Professor and PI with the Electric and Computer Engineering Department, Universidad Nacional del Sur, Bahía Blanca, Argentina, a fellow of the National Council of Science and Technology of Argentina (CONICET), and the Chair of the Imaging Sciences Laboratory. He is author of more than 90 Scopus indexed papers, and more than 100 refereed international conference papers. His current interests include image and video processing, computer graphics, scientific visualization, and artificial intelligence. Dr. Delrieux received the B.S. degree in electric engineering and the Ph.D. degree in computer science from the Universidad Nacional del Sur.

Dr. Dan Goldowitz received his PhD in Psychobiology at the University of California at Irvine and did postdoctoral training in Boston, Stockholm and Salt Lake City where the focus was on brain development. Currently, he is a Professor in the Department of Medical Genetics at UBC and member of the Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics and a former Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Developmental Neurogenetics. He led a successful application and a renewal for a Canadian Network of Centres of Excellence in brain development in late 2009 and 2014, called NeuroDevNet, now called Kids Brain Health Network. Dr. Goldowitz brought together a group of skilled and passionate researchers and important stakeholders across Canada to make significant impacts in the domains of neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and cerebral palsy. He then co-led a successful national competition held by CIHR in chronic disease Strategies for Patient Oriented Research (SPOR) in brain-based disorders, CHILD-BRIGHT and its renewal in 2022. Most recently he co-led a successful application for an CIHR SPOR National Training Entity in 2021. In the lab, Dan continues using mouse models to study perturbations of brain development and the genes that drive the development of the cerebellum.

Dr. Pablo Nepomnaschy (MA, PhD) is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Maternal & Child Health Laboratory in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University (SFU) and is the International Representative for the Human Biology Society and the BC Representative for the Canadian DOHaD Society. He joined SFU in 2008 following his training in evolutionary biology and bio-anthropology at the University of Michigan, and his post-doc in epidemiology at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), USA. Dr. Nepomnaschy’s research focuses on the influence that naturally occurring psychosocial, energetic and immune challenges have on the ontogeny of the stress axis and its impact on developmental trajectories and health starting before conception and continuing across the lifespan. He leads the development of naturalistic longitudinal periconceptional cohorts in Canada, Guatemala, India, Mexico and Argentina. His research focuses on socioecological factors, development of stress and reproductive axes, and how individuals respond and adapt to subsequent stress challenges across the lifecourse. Nepomnaschy is funded by NSERC, MSFHR, and a CIHR Indigenous Healthy Life Trajectories Initiative (I-HeLTI) Team Grant in partnership with the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council (NTC). 

Dr. Ashley Wazana is an Associate Professor in Psychiatry at McGill University and is an FRQS senior clinician-scientist with a clinical appointment at the Jewish General Hospital (JGH) and research cross appointments at the JGH and the Douglas Institute in Montreal. He currently works as a child psychiatrist. He leads the Developmental Research in Early Adversity Mental health BIological susceptibility and Gender (DREAM BIG) project, an international consortium he founded which harmonises five prenatal cohorts to examines the complex interplay between children’s genetic makeup and their earliest environment (pre and perinatal) in the prediction of mental illness. This multinational collaboration (Canada, UK, Netherlands, Singapore, America) aims to ensure replicated research by developing complex methodologies (including deep learning algorithms) able to consider multi-level susceptibility profiles, environments, and outcomes.