Program

Professor Bernhard Riedel

Bernhard is an academic anaesthesiologist and the Director of the Department of Anaesthesia, Perioperative Medicine, and Pain Medicine at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Australia. He holds a Professorial appointment at the University of Melbourne. His research is focused on enhanced preoperative risk stratification and optimization of modifiable risk (prehabilitation) to reduce the ‘hidden pandemic’ of complications and death after major surgery. Specific to cancer surgery, he is a thought leader in a global collaborative on oncoanaesthesia. In this regard, his research explores the interaction of perioperative adrenergic-inflammatory response, anaesthetic technique on cancer progression, and prehabilitation to reduce postoperative complications.

Dr Brian Mahoney

Dr. Brian Mahoney is an assistant professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and a community-based physician with training in family medicine, anesthesiology, and addiction medicine. Since graduating in 2002, he has focused on patient safety, innovative models of care delivery, and closing the research-to-practice gap—pursuits he finds far more fulfilling than the unceasing emails from his roles as department head and program director. With clinical experience in primary care, anesthesia, and behaviour change, and a strong interest in fitness, nutrition, and disease prevention, he is now working to advance surgical prehabilitation in community hospital settings.

Dr Camilla Wong

Dr. Camilla Wong is a geriatrician at St. Michael’s Hospital, an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto, and an Investigator at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute. Her clinical and research interests include the implementation and evaluation of cross-specialty collaborative care models for older adults. She is the geriatrician-lead for the geriatric trauma service as well as the Older Adults Surgery and Oncology Program at St. Michael’s Hospital.

Assistant Professor Chelsia Gillis

Chelsia Gillis, MSc PhD, RD, CNSC, is an Assistant Professor in the School of Human Nutrition at McGill University and an Associate Member in the Departments of Surgery and Anesthesia. She holds a Tier II Canada Research Chair in Perioperative Nutrition and serves as Director of Medical Research at the PeriOperative Program at the Montreal General Hospital. Dr. Gillis is a Registered Dietitian and Certified Nutrition Support Clinician®, with an MSc in Human Nutrition from McGill University and a PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Calgary.

Dr Chris Nguan

Dr. Christopher Nguan is a Canadian transplant surgeon-scientist and Associate Professor in the Department of Urologic Sciences at the University of British Columbia (UBC). He serves as Surgical Director of Kidney Transplantation at Vancouver General Hospital, where he has led the program since 2006, helping it grow into one of the largest in North America. Nationally, he chairs the Kidney Surgical Subcommittee for Canadian Blood Services, shaping policy and practice in organ transplantation across the country.

His clinical and research focus lies at the intersection of kidney transplantation, surgical innovation, and patient outcomes. Dr. Nguan has advanced pioneering work in prehabilitation for renal transplant candidates, including frailty assessment, patient optimization prior to surgery, and enhanced recovery strategies. His research spans organ preservation, graft modification, ischemia-reperfusion injury, and living donor safety, with findings that have informed both clinical practice and health policy.

Dr Christina Prickett

Dr Christina Prickett is a Senior Clinical Psychologist at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne. In this role, Christina has been involved in a range of clinical and research projects including overseeing a psychological screening program for men being treated for prostate cancer, the development and implementation of the Prehabilitation service, and integrating psychosocial services for patients with chronic pain within the Acute and Persistent Pain service. Currently, Christina is working as the project manager for the Prep-4-Cancer Surgery Toolkit project where she is co-ordinating the co-design and evaluation of a soon to be released website-based resource for implementing prehabilitation services with patients having major cancer surgery.

Professor Daniel MacIsaac

Dr. Dan McIsaac is Professor and Vice Chair for Research and Innovation in the Department of Anesthesiology & Pain Medicine at the University of Ottawa. Dan’s research program focuses on improving care and outcomes for high risk surgical patients, including through prehabilitation. His team’s work, built on partnershps developed through integrated knowledge translation, includes foundational reviews mapping prehabilitation interventions and their relative efficacy, as well as conduct of large, multicenter randomized trials, such as PREPARE and STRIVE. Dan also serves as an Editorial Board member at Anesthesiology, Anesthesia & Analgesia and the Canadian Journal of Anaesthesia.

Professor Daniel Santa Mina

Dr. Daniel Santa Mina is a kinesiologist and clinical exercise physiologist. Dr. Santa Mina is a Professor at the University of Toronto in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education and cross-appointed to the Faculty of Medicine in the Department of Surgery. At the University Health Network in Toronto, Canada, he is a Clinician Investigator in the Department of Anesthesia and Pain Management and Director of Research and Programming for the Prehabilitation Program. Dr. Santa Mina’s research focus is exercise, rehabilitation, and prehabilitation in clinical populations, including older adults with cancer. He has achieved over $21MM in grant funding and has published over 140 peer-reviewed papers.

Professor Denny Levitt

Professor Levett is a Consultant in Perioperative and Critical Care Medicine at University Hospital Southampton and Honorary Professor at the University of Southampton. She brings extensive experience in clinical leadership, research, education, and service transformation in perioperative care.

Professor Levett has led the development of a multidisciplinary perioperative service in Southampton, integrating digital innovation, shared decision-making, and community-based prehabilitation to improve outcomes and patient experience. Her work has been widely recognised, with digital tools such as virtual surgery schools and the MyOp prehabilitation app now featured in the NHS Digital Playbook. She has recently been appointed as the Director for the Centre of Perioperative Care.

Denny is founding co-President of the International Prehabilitation Society (IPOETTS) and Co-Lead of the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre’s Perioperative and Critical Care Theme at University Hospital Southampton. She has chaired expert consensus guidance on surgery schools, shared decision-making, nutrition, and prehabilitation, and currently co-chairs the CPOC–NIHR–Macmillan implementation guidelines on prehabilitation for patients with cancer. Her research with the Fit 4 Surgery research group in Southampton has included multimodal prehabilitation trials (Wesfit; Safefit; Inspire) and risk evaluation prior to major surgery. Professor Levett’s research has focused on optimising surgical outcomes, empowering patient self-management, and improving the cost-effectiveness of care through targeted interventions.

Professor Levett also has an interest in adaptation to hypoxia and was a founding member of the Xtreme Everest Hypoxia Consortium at UCL. She was the research lead and a climber on the Caudwell Xtreme Everest Research Expedition, a high altitude field study of hypoxia adaptation. Her PhD thesis involved evaluating exercise capacity at up to 8000m on Mount Everest.

Dr Duminda Wijeysundera

Dr. Duminda Wijeysundera is Professor, Staff Anesthesiologist, and the Elizabeth A. and Richard J. Currie, O.C. Chair in Translational Anesthesia Research at St. Michael’s Hospital – Unity Health Toronto and the University of Toronto. He is an internationally recognized leader in perioperative medicine, with research focused on improving the prediction, prevention, and treatment of adverse outcomes after surgery, including major complications and disability.

He has published more than 390 peer-reviewed articles, supported by funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, PSI Foundation, Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, Canadian Anesthesia Research Foundation, Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, and the Government of Ontario.

His contributions have been recognized through election as a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (2025) and as a Member of the College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada (2022). He serves on the Board of Directors of the International Anesthesia Research Society, is an Associate Editor at Anesthesiology, and sits on the Editorial Boards of the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia and Circulation.

Ella Sexton

Ella is a Senior Clinical Psychologist at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and a lecturer in the School of Psychology/Faculty of Health at Deakin University, Melbourne Australia. As a senior clinician in psychological prehabilitation, her work focuses on developing psychological models of care for prehabilitation of people undergoing cancer treatment. Her current research is dedicated to improving prehabilitation for people with head and neck cancer, aiming to enhance patient outcomes and quality of life through specialised psychological support.

Dr Erin Morley

Dr. Erin Morley is an academic general internist at UBC. She completed medical training at UBC as a Wesbrook scholar, with additional fellowship training in Perioperative Cardiovascular Medicine at McMaster University. Dr. Morley helped develop the VGH perioperative medicine service. She has a number of perioperative publications, and specifically has been published in the special perioperative edition of CJGIM on “How to set up a perioperative BNP/NTproBNP and troponin screening program”. She co-leads the UBC perioperative medicine fellowship and recently presented on perioperative internal medicine at the RMIM conference. Her commitment to teaching has earned her a nomination for the Canadian National Society for Perioperative Research and Care teaching award.

Dr Faisal Beg

Dr. Mirza Faisal Beg is a Professor in the School of Engineering Science at Simon Fraser University, and Chief Executive and Chief Scientific Officer of Voronoi Health Analytics Inc. in Vancouver, Canada. He earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and his MS and PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Boston University and the Johns Hopkins University, respectively. Dr. Beg’s career spans over two decades at the intersection of engineering, medicine, and computational science. He has been recognized with the SFU Faculty of Applied Science’s Excellence in Teaching Award (2011), the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of BC’s Meritorious Achievement Award (2012), and the Faculty of Applied Science Excellence in Research Award (2015). His research has advanced novel algorithms and quantitative imaging biomarkers for neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal dementia using MRI and FDG-PET, as well as glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration through retinal OCT. Currently, his work focuses on developing deep learning and AI-driven tools for comprehensive, automated analysis of MRI, CT, and PET imaging. Through both his academic research and translation into globally useful automated software platform, he is pioneering the use of quantitative body composition and multi-organ imaging to understand how diseases and interventions interact across tissues and systems and change as a function of aging, disease and interventions. His goal is to establish predictive, personalized models that integrate organ health, metabolic reserves, and disease burden, enabling precision medicine and improved clinical outcomes at scale.

Professor Franco Carli

Franco Carli is Professor Emeritus, Department of Anesthesia at McGill University and Associate Professor in the School of Dietetics and Human Nutrition at McGill University. He was previously Wesley Bourne Professor and Chairman at McGill University and is a member elect of the American Aceadmy of Anesthesiology. He is a Founding Member of the International Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) Society, President of the Peri-Operative Program (POP) Charitable Foundation, and a Board member of the International Prehabilitation Society. In 2012 he received the Gold Award from the Canadian Anesthesiologists Society. Professor Carli’s research interests are in mechanisms of ERAS, prehabilitation, and postoperative recovery. He has authored over 400 peer-reviewed scientific articles and received over 60 peer and non-peer review grants.

Dr Gabriele Baldini

Dr. Gabriele Baldini graduated in Medicine in 2003 from the University of Florence, Italy. After having completed his residency program in Anesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine in 2007 from the University of Florence, he completed a clinical fellowship in Anesthesia for Minimal Invasive Surgery and Fast-track surgery, and a clinical fellowship in Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine at McGill University. He also received a Masters Degree in Science Experimental Surgery at McGill University.
From 2011 to 2021 he worked as an anesthesiologist in the Department of Anesthesia at the Montreal General Hospital. In 2015 he was appointed Medical Director of the Montreal General Hospital Preoperative Centre, at McGill University. In 2017 he became Associate Professor of Anesthesia, at McGill University. From 2021 to 2023, he was part of the board of directors of the Enhanced Recovery Canada Society. Since 2022, he is now working in the Department of Anesthesia and Intensive Care, University of Florence, Italy, as Anesthesiologist, Intensivist, and coordinator of the Multimodal Prehabilitation Center. He remains Adjunct Professor of Anesthesiology in the Department of Anesthesia, at McGill University.

Geoff Schierbeck

Geoff Schierbeck is a physician leader dedicated to improving surgical care and patient outcomes across British Columbia. As a key contributor to the Perioperative Clinical Action Network (PCAN) and the Doctors of BC, he has led the expansion of surgical prehabilitation and enhanced recovery initiatives to over 30 sites province-wide. Geoff’s work focuses on building collaboration between physicians, health authorities, and the Ministry of Health to improve access, optimize patients before surgery, improve patient experience, and improve surgical outcomes. Through his leadership, BC is emerging as a center of excellence in perioperative innovation and patient-centered surgical transformation.

Dr Hance Clarke

Hance Clarke is a staff anesthesiologist and the Director of Pain Services and the Pain Research Unit at the Toronto General Hospital.  Dr. Clarke is currently the knowledge Translation Chair For the University of Toronto Centre For the Study of Pain and a Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine at the University of Toronto. He currently holds the GoodHope Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Chair in Translational Medicine and a Canada Research Chair in Chronic Pain, Mental Health & Substance Use and has been recognized internationally for the development of the Toronto General Hospital Transitional Pain Service.  He is the president of the Canadian Pain Society and the past-president of the Canadian Consortium for the Investigation of Cannabinoids.  He has authored over 220 peer reviewed publications and has been invited to speak on pain control, cannabis and the opioid crisis to the House of Commons in Ottawa, Canada and elsewhere around the world.

Dr Ianthe Boden

Dr Ianthe Boden is a Surgical and Critical Care Specialist Physiotherapist with over 25 years clinical experience. In 2023 she was awarded a prestigious Australian Government research fellowship to progress her work on improving recovery and preventing pneumonia after major surgery. Dr Boden is a keen clinical trialist with internationally recognised impactful research. Her first RCT, LIPPSMAck POP, investigated the effect of respiratory prehabilitation to prevent postoperative pneumonia, was published in BMJ and is now recognised as one of the Top 20 Physiotherapy trials of all time. Her most recent multicentre clinical trial, ICEAGE, investigated physiotherapy to improve recovery after emergency abdominal surgery. This study won World Physiotherapy Best Clinical Trial in 2019 and is cited within international ERAS Guidelines for Emergency Laparotomy. She is currently leading CHESTY, a consortium of 35 hospitals across 6 countries assessing the incidence of pulmonary complications in 5000 patients having major surgery.

Imogen Fecher-Jones

Imogen Fecher-Jones, MSc, RN, is an advanced perioperative medicine practitioner and academic clinical fellow at University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust. She leads the innovative “Fit 4 Surgery School,” a behaviour-change focused prehabilitation intervention supporting patients preparing for major surgery. With a nursing background in major surgery and high dependency care, she has an MSc from King’s College London and is currently undertaking a doctoral fellowship on preoperative education interventions. Alongside her studies she has also acted as a clinical advisor to NHS England and the Cancer Alliance. She has authored a number of publications about group-based patient education, as well as the ERAS nurse role. Imogen is widely recognised for integrating behavioural science into surgical pathways and advancing patient-centred perioperative care.

Dr Jacqueline Trudeau

Dr. Jacqueline Trudeau is a staff anesthesiologist at Vancouver General Hospital. She specializes in hepatobiliary and liver transplant anesthesia and has fellowship training in transfusion medicine. She is the medical director of the perioperative blood management program, which has been managing 500-700 patients per year since 2003.

Dr Janius Tsang

Dr. Janius Tsang obtained her medical degree from the University of Calgary in 2004 and then graduated from the McGill University Anesthesiology residency program in 2009. After a decade practicing in the community setting, she returned to McGill University in 2021, where she completed a master’s degree in Surgical and Interventional Sciences with a Surgical Outcomes concentration in 2024. Her thesis project presents profiles of prehabilitation participants that are associated with decreased complication risk after colorectal surgery. Her interests lie in developing a prehabilitation specific
psychological intervention, exploring the construct of resilience as an aspect of pre-operative risk stratification, and using cardiopulmonary exercise testing for risk stratification and exercise prescription.

Dr. Tsang is also a staff anesthesiologist at the McGill University Health Center – Montreal General Hospital site, working in the operating room. She is also the director of the McGill University Health Center Prehabilitation Clinic. She is involved in medical teaching as the coordinator for perioperative medicine for McGill Anesthesiology residents.

She is also mother of three young boys under the age of 12, is an exercise fanatic, trains for Hyrox events and mountaineering expeditions, and loves coffee and chocolate.

June Davis

June is Lead Allied Health Professional and Nursing Advisor for Macmillan Cancer Support., a Director of Allied Health Solutions and Co lead for the Aspirant Cancer Career and Education development programme (ACCEND) co-programme with NHS England. June has 31 years’ experience working in and with the NHS as a Dietitian, service and professional lead, general manager for a number of service areas within the acute setting and senior project lead for a varied portfolio of large scale change projects. June is involved in leading, providing strategic advice and working with many different organisations on workforce and service transformation in cancer and within wider specialities across healthcare. June co-led and authored the UK wide principles and guidance on prehabilitation in cancer launched at the World Prehabilitation Congress in 2019.In direct response to Covid-19 directed the development and delivery of SafeFit, a free, self-referral remote prehabilitation offer to people with suspicion of, or a confirmed cancer diagnosis at any stage in the pathway across the UK. This involved considerable collaboration with multiple external partners.

Dr Kelly Mayson

Kelly Mayson is a Clinical Professor at UBC Department of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology & Therapeutics.  She has serviced as Chair for the Steering Committee of Physician Lead Quality and Spread Quality Initiatives at Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, and the Co-lead for the British Columbia provincial Surgical Patient Optimization Collaborative.  She has been actively involved with an Enhanced Recovery After Surgery Program at Vancouver Acute since 2012 and is currently an advisor for Enhanced Recovery Canada.

Professor Kristin Campbell

Kristin Campbell, BSc, PT, PhD is a licensed physical therapist and a Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. She also an Affiliated Scientist in the Cancer Control Program at the BC Cancer Research Institute. Her research focus is on the role of exercise in cancer rehabilitation and survivorship She has published over 150 peer review papers, and she was the co-lead of the 2019 exercise guidelines for cancer survivors from the American College of Sports Medicine.  She is a member of the Oncology Division of the Canadian Physiotherapy Association and a Fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine.  

Laura Churchill

Laura Churchill is a Physiotherapist and Research Associate with the Active Aging Research team at University of British Columbia. Laura completed a MSc and a combined MPT (Master of Physical Therapy) and PhD at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada. Her PhD research focused on the development and evaluation of resources to improve the quality of care for individuals with knee osteoarthritis. Laura completed a post-doctoral fellowship in the Physical Therapy Program at the University of Colorado with Dr. Jennifer Stevens-Lapsley, where she studied evidence based and technology-enabled solutions for older adults and individuals undergoing total knee replacement. Since 2017, Laura has also practiced clinically as a physiotherapist (with a focus on sport medicine), helping athletes and active community members get back to doing what they love.

With the Active Aging Research Team, Laura combines her clinical and research experience to adapt an evidence-based physical activity program “Choose to Move” for people on surgical waitlists for hip and knee replacement surgery.

Professor Leah Avery

Leah is a Professor of Applied Health Psychology and a Chartered Practitioner Health Psychologist at Teesside University in the UK. Her expertise is in the development, delivery, and evaluation of health behaviour change interventions, specifically in the context of prehabilitation and for the management of long-term health conditions.
Leah has developed a range of interventions that have been integrated into routine care settings and has trained clinical teams to effectively deliver behaviour change interventions and techniques in person and remotely. Most recently she has co-led a study that has involved the co-development and evaluation of a digital prehabilitation programme called iPrepwell. She is also a member of the international steering committee tasked with updating the Macmillan Prehabilitation Guidance. As part of this work, she co-leads the behaviour change and technology workstream.

Dr Leandra Amado

After completing training in Johannesburg, South Africa, Dr. Amado embarked on a clinical fellowship in Perioperative Medicine at St Michael’s Hospital, Toronto. She is a Staff Anesthesiologist at the Ottawa Hospital and Clinician Investigator at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. Her special interests are geriatric anesthesia, frailty, perioperative brain health and the psychological determinants of perioperative outcomes. She serves an additional role as the Medical Director of the Pre-Anesthetic Unit (PAU) and is part of the Virtual Recovery after Surgery (VRAS) team.

Professor Linda Denehy

Linda Denehy is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, Professor of Physiotherapy at the University of Melbourne and Professor of Health Services Research at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. Linda is an academic Physiotherapists and an experienced researcher. Her primary research interests are in exercise and recovery across the perioperative continuum for patients having major cancer surgery and in pre and rehabilitation in haematological and gynaecological cancers. Her research includes implementing prehabilitation models of care and pre and rehabilitation in stem cell transplant recipients. She is also an experienced and passionate mentor of post-doctoral fellows, higher degree research students and allied health clinicians. She has authored over 275 publications and has secured grant funding success of over AUD$22m.

Dr Lindi Thibodeau

Dr. Lindi Thibodeau is an anesthesiologist at Comox Valley Hospital on Vancouver Island. She has a strong interest in prehabilitation and helping patients prepare for surgery in ways that improve safety and recovery. Over the past several years, she has been working with colleagues across British Columbia to develop practical tools and processes that support earlier risk assessment, medication management, and surgical optimization. Much of her work has focused on building connections between community hospitals and provincial leaders to strengthen care before surgery. She is passionate about ensuring patients feel supported and well-prepared throughout their surgical journey.

Assistant Professor Malcolm West

Assistant Professor Malcolm West was appointed to the University of Southampton as a clinical academic in colorectal surgery and prehabilitation medicine in 2022. He is a consultant colorectal and advanced malignancy surgeon at University Hospitals Southampton NHS Foundation Trust.

Malcolm trained as a clinical academic in the Northwest of England and in Wessex. He completed a NIHR funded PhD in exercise physiology, perioperative risk stratification, and prehabilitation in patients undergoing advanced rectal cancer treatment. He later held an NIHR Academic Fellowship and a NIHR Clinical Lectureship in Surgery in Southampton. He completed specialist training as the Royal College of Surgeons Senior Fellow in complex and robotic colorectal cancer surgery at St Mark’s Hospital, London.

Malcolm leads a translational research programme focused on mechanisms of prehabilitation, improving perioperative and long-term outcomes after major cancer surgery within the NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre as part of the Perioperative and Critical Care theme. His research interests include perioperative risk assessment and how multimodal prehabilitation interventions improve resilience, body composition, tumour and immune outcomes after cancer treatment.

Malcolm is the incoming co-chair of the NIHR Research for Patient Benefit programme and the Wessex Cancer Alliance Lead for Early Diagnostics in Colorectal Cancer. He also supervises multiple postgraduate research students in Southampton and across the UK.

Dr Maxwell Slepian

Dr. Max Slepian is a Clinical and Health Psychologist and Lead Psychologist of the Prehabilitation Program, Transitional Pain Service, and GoodHope Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Clinic at Toronto General Hospital. He is also a Clinician Investigator aligned with the Krembil Research Institute, Assistant Professor in the University of Toronto Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, and Pain Scientist with the University of Toronto Centre for the Study of Pain. Dr. Slepian completed his PhD at Ohio University and psychology residency at the University of Washington in Seattle. His research focuses on the role of psychological factors, particularly resilience, in the experience of pain and the development of chronic pain after surgery. He also researches and practices psychological interventions for management of acute and chronic pain and to prevent the development of chronic pain after surgery.

Megan Beggs

Megan Beggs is a registered dietitian and research fellow at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada with expertise in critical care nutrition, micronutrient metabolism and trace element homeostasis. Beginning September 2025, she will join the College of Pharmacy and Nutrition at the University of Saskatchewan as an Assistant Professor. Dr. Beggs’ research focuses on the physiology and metabolism of micronutrients ranging from basic science to clinical trials.  

Dr Michelle Scheepers

Dr. Michelle Scheepers is the Medical Director of Surgical Services at Interior Health and a practicing Anesthesiologist at Penticton Regional Hospital. She is passionate about prehabilitation and integrating innovative virtual platforms into perioperative care. In 2024, she completed an MBA at Royal Roads University, where her research focused on physician engagement in continuous quality improvement. She is also a graduate of the BCPSQC Clinical Quality Academy, the UBC Sauder Physician Leadership Program, and the IHI Improvement Advisor Program. As a Clinical Instructor with UBC, she enjoys teaching and leading physician-led initiatives that foster engagement, resilience, and joy in work.

Professor Mike Grocott

Mike Grocott is the Professor of Anaesthesia and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Southampton, director of the Southampton NIHR Biomedical Research Centre (BRC; 2022-28), chair of the UK BRC Directors Forum, and an NIHR Senior Investigator (reappointed 2022). He is president of the Perioperative Quality Initiative (POQI) and was previously elected vice-president of the Royal College of Anaesthetists (2019-20).

Mike co-chaired the 2019 “Principles and guidance for prehabilitation within the management and support of people with cancer” and the 2025 “Consensus guidelines on prehabilitation for people with cancer” on behalf of Macmillan Cancer Support, the Royal College of Anaesthetists/Centre for Perioperative Care and the NIHR Cancer Nutrition Collaborative. Mike is joint editor-in-chief of Perioperative Medicine and a board member of the British Journal of Anaesthesia.

Dr Miquel Coca-Martinez

Dr. Miquel Coca-Martinez is an anesthesiologist at Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont (Montreal); his focus in research is on multimodal prehabilitation in vascular surgery. Trained in Barcelona and Montreal (Universitat de Barcelona and McGill University), he has contributed extensively to the evidence base in perioperative medicine through international collaborations and peer-reviewed publications. His research explores the optimization of functional capacity to improve surgical outcomes and quality of life in high-risk populations.

Professor Nancy Mayo

Nancy Mayo is a Distinguished James McGill Professor, Department of Medicine (Divisions of Geriatrics, Graduate Program in Clinical and Translational Research, and Clinical Epidemiology), and the School of Physical and Occupational Therapy (SPOT), McGill University. Trained originally as a Physical Therapist, Dr. Mayo holds a PhD in Epidemiology and Biostatistics. She leads a research program on Function, Disability and Quality of Life in Canada’s Vulnerable Populations. Methodologically she specializes in measurement of health outcomes, design and analysis of complex interventions, and optimizing methods and analyses for rich data producing more than 380 scholarly works. Professor Mayo published her first trial in 1981 and has conducted and participated in more than 30 trials, all of complex interventions. Her first trial on prehabilitation was published in 2010 and she is currently working on a prehabilitation program for people with soft tissue sarcoma.

Dr Puneeta Tandon

Dr. Tandon is an Professor of Medicine at the University of Alberta, Director of the Cirrhosis Care Clinic and Transplant Hepatologist with additional training from Yale University and the Hospital Clinic in Barcelona. Her research interests include cirrhosis quality improvement, frailty assessment, exercise, and nutrition, and the use of digital solutions across chronic conditions to promote disease education and physical and mental health. It is her career goal to provide wholistic, interdisciplinary, evidence based, patient-centered care through education, empowerment, engagement and team-work.

Professor Sandy Jack

Sandy Jack is a Professor of Prehabilitation Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine at University of Southampton, and Honorary Consultant Clinician Scientist in Perioperative Medicine at University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust (UHS) She has >20 years of experience leading and delivering healthcare services in public sectors, including community settings in the UK. She has> 15 years’ experience in prehabilitation medicine and is considered a national/international leader in her field. She was the first to show that cancer treatments decreased physical fitness, leading to poor outcomes and high–intensity exercise-training reversed/ameliorated the decline and improved tumour regression outcomes. She has a global perspective of the challenges and works with international partners to address these.
Sandy is Co-Director of Fit-4-Consortium and Director of Centre for Human Integrative Physiology in the NIHR Research Facility. She is a Board member on numerous Societies. She is CI on several trials, including the NHSE&I Sustainability and Transformation Partnership Cancer Transformation funded multi-centre Wessex Fit-Cancer Surgery Trial-WesFit (http://www.wesfit.org.uk), which is evaluating multimodal prehabilitation in patients undergoing major intra-cavity cancer surgery in the community settings. In response to the pandemic, she transformed WesFit into SafeFit (http://www.SafeFit.nhs.uk) utilising virtual clinics to deliver multimodal interventions. She has co-authored over 28 publications and co- investigator on >£5.3 million in research grants. Her team have been awarded 15 prizes including the Health Service Journal Cancer Care Initiative of the Year award for WesFit. She has recently been appointed as the theme lead for Prehabilitation for our £25,000,000 NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre and she is Co-Lead of the UHS Prehabilitation Medicine Clinical Service.

Dr Stan Kubow

Dr. Stan Kubow is an Associate Professor in the School of Human Nutrition at McGill University, with a research portfolio comprising 186 peer-reviewed publications and over 100 peer-reviewed grants. His work spans clinical intervention and human population studies, advanced animal models, and cell culture systems, all focused on understanding how nutritional interventions influence disease outcomes.
Dr. Kubow’s current research includes exploring the role of the gut microbiome and the effects of prebiotic and probiotic supplementation in inflammatory conditions such as osteogenesis imperfecta, cancer immunotherapy, environmental pollutant exposure, and autism spectrum disorders. He is also engaged in collaborative efforts applying proteomics to identify biomarkers for precision prehabilitation. His research employs a systems biology approach, integrating multi-omic molecular profiling to uncover mechanistic insights that lay the groundwork for targeted clinical intervention trials.

Dr Susan Lee

Dr. Susan Lee is an associate professor at the University of British Columbia Department of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology, & Therapeutics.  She got her start in research as a resident at the University of Western Ontario studying perioperative smoking cessation and later obtaining a Master’s in Clinical Research at UCSF.  She currently leads the anesthesia research team at Royal Columbian Hospital and Eagle Ridge Hospitals.  She has collaborated in multiple prehabilitation studies and has been leading regional efforts to improve digital surgical patient optimization.  She is an Anesthesia Champion with NSQIP, teaches QI to healthcare workers across the health region, and coaches the UBC anesthesia residents in QI.  Whether it’s research or QI, Dr. Lee is always looking for better ways to prepare patients for their surgical journeys.

Associate Professor Tamara Cohen

Tamara Cohen is an Associate Professor specializing in behavioural nutrition intervention design. Her research focuses on understanding and influencing eating behaviours across diverse populations. Through interdisciplinary approaches, she develops evidence-based strategies to promote healthier dietary patterns and contributes to advancing public health through teaching, research, and community engagement.

Tom Parkington

Tom is a clinical exercise physiologist and postdoctoral researcher at the Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre, Sheffield Hallam University, UK. His research focuses on exercise in chronic disease management, prehabilitation, and rehabilitation. He is the lead researcher on an international project developing a Core Screening, Assessment, and Outcome Set for cancer prehabilitation. This work aims to standardise reporting across research and clinical services to improve trial efficiency, enhance research quality, and support evidence synthesis to advance global cancer prehabilitation practice.

Dr Tracy Monk

Dr Tracy Monk is a Family Doctor in Burnaby. She is the Medical Director of PathwaysBC. She graduated from McGill Medical School and has served on the Family Practice Services Committee and held several other medical leadership roles.