An annual National Student Conference dedicated to epidemiology and biostatistics research

The annual CSEB student conference brings together students from across Canada in the fields of epidemiology and biostatistics. This year's conference theme is Patterns of Health: A Population Perspective. The conference includes a poster session, rapid fire poster and oral presentations, keynote speakers, workshops, and social events.

The conference is being hosted by the Department of Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba. The University has a long history of strong academic research in Indigenous health, child health, aging, health services, and global public health research. The University has strong ties with the surrounding community and the world-renowned National Microbiology Laboratory.

Winnipeg is a diverse multicultural city located at the heart of North America and is known for being friendly and welcoming. Winnipeg has a rich arts and cultural scene, and boasts of many festivals, art galleries, and museums. Winnipeg has several professional sports teams that our city proudly supports. Visit the Forks National Historic Site's many restaurants, boutiques, and the new Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Walk across the Esplanade Riel Bridge into St. Boniface, Winnipeg's French Quarter, and satiate your taste buds at one of the many restaurants and cafes. Explore Winnipeg's historic Exchange District where you'll find artist-run galleries and studios, theatres, cafes, restaurants, pubs, night clubs, and boutiques. Osborne Village, voted one of the greatest neighbourhoods to live in Canada, features nationally recognized restaurants and many boutiques, cafes, and nightclubs. For more reasons to visit Winnipeg, visit Tourism Winnipeg 's website.

Dr. Lisa Lix | Faculty Advisor

Dr. Lisa Lix is a Professor of Biostatistics and Manitoba Research Chair (2012 – 2017), College of Medicine, University of Manitoba, Canada. She is also Director (since 2012) of the Data Science Platform within the George and Fay Yee Centre for Healthcare Innovation, a new patient-oriented research centre at the University of Manitoba. Dr. Lix’s areas of research expertise include health services research methods, statistical methods for evaluation of the quality of administrative health databases, the analysis of repeated measures and longitudinal data, and robust statistical methods for patient-reported outcomes. She collaborates widely on projects about population health and the association between chronic disease and quality of life.

Contact: lisa.lix@umanitoba.ca

Dr. Nathan Nickel | Faculty Advisor

Dr. Nathan Nickel is a Research Scientist at the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy and teaches Principles of Epidemiology in the department of Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba. Dr. Nickel’s expertise focuses on health service research using administrative data and health equity research in the area of maternal and child health. He is particularly interested in causal inference with respect to the evaluation of maternal and child health interventions.

Contact: Nathan_Nickel@cpe.umanitoba.ca

Aynslie Hinds | Conference co-chair

Aynslie completed a Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor of Arts Honours, majoring in Statistics, Mathematics, and Psychology at the University of Winnipeg. She completed an MSc from the Department of Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba under the guidance of Dr. Lisa Lix. Her Master’s thesis research examined residential mobility among individuals with different mental illnesses using administrative data housed at the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy.

Aynslie is currently a PhD student in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba. Under the supervision of Dr. Lix, Aynslie’s dissertation research examines the health of people applying to and residing in Manitoba public housing using administrative data. She recently received a PhD Dissertation Award from Research Manitoba to support her dissertation research.

Contact: umhinds0@myumanitoba.ca

Kristine Kroeker | Conference co-chair

Kristine completed her Bachelor of Science Honours degree from the University of Manitoba. Under the supervision of Dr. Lisa Lix, she is in her second year in her Master’s program in Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba. Her thesis is on developing statistical methods for combining diagnostic validity estimates from administrative health data. She is a recipient of a CIHR Canada Graduate Scholarship and of a Canadian Network for Advanced Interdisciplinary Methods for comparative effectiveness research (CAN_AIM) Training Scholarship in 2015/16.

Contact: umeinar6@myumanitoba.ca

Laetitia Guillemette | Conference co-chair/ Logistics

Laetitia completed her Bachelor of Science (co-op), majoring in Pharmacology, in 2012 at the Université de Sherbrooke in Québec. She also completed a Master’s of Science in Physiology (Endocrinology) at this same university, under the supervision of Drs Marie-France Hivert and Patrice Perron, in 2014. Her MSc thesis research, funded by a provincial Fonds de recherche en santé - Québec research studentship, examined the role of inflammation marker TNFα in insulin resistance during pregnancy using data collected from a population-based cohort study (Gen3G cohort) in Sherbrooke, Québec.

Laetitia is currently a PhD student in the program of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba, following the joint guidance of Drs Jonathan McGavock and Todd Duhamel. Her research interests lie in understanding the independent impact of exposure to maternal diabetes on the child’s risk of cardiometabolic complications using both cohort data (iCARE cohort) and administrative datasets housed at the Manitoba Center for Health Policy. She was recently awarded two provincial research studentship (from the Fonds de recherche en santé - Québec and Research Manitoba) to support her doctoral work.

Contact: guilleml@myumanitoba.ca

Sasha Blant | Scientific/Workshops

Alexandra (Sasha) Blant is a PhD student in the department of Biochemistry and Medical Genetics and studies the influence of cultural practices patterns on genetic variation, phenotypic diversity and patterns of human disease incidence. Sasha received her undergraduate training in Genetics and earned her M.Sc in Physiology with focus on heart disease. In her spare time she enjoys art and canoeing.

Contact: umblant@myumanitoba.ca

Jahanzeb Ansari | Scientific

Jahanzeb Ansari is a Masters student in the department of Physiology and Pathophysiology under the supervision of Dr. Brian Schmidt. He is working on the role of intrinsic nerve fibers (propriospinal fibers) in the uninjured adult mammals and in the case of spinal cord injury, and their therapeutic implications. He completed his Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery from the Jinnah Medical and Dental College, Karachi, Pakistan.

Contact: ansarijh@myumanitoba.ca

Angela Krutish | Finance

Angela completed a Bachelor of Science, Honours in Genetics degree at the University of Manitoba. She is currently a Masters student in the Department of Biochemistry and Medical Genetics at the University of Manitoba and is supervised by Dr. Michelle Liu and Dr. Louise Simard. Her thesis research investigates the relationships between prenatal and perinatal complications and autism spectrum disorders (ASD), using administrative data housed at the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy. She is also examining the associations between autism spectrum disorders and DNA methylation and gene expression levels using a twin study.

Contact: umanhalt@myumanitoba.ca

Sabella Yussuf-Homenauth | Social

Sabella completed a Bachelor of Science Degree in Pharmacy, Distinction, from the University of Guyana, South America. Her experience lies both in the areas of National Pharmaceutical Procurement and Supply Chain Management, and as the former Coordinator of Public Health and Health Promotion Program at the Ministry of Health, Guyana. She is currently a first year Masters of Public Health student within the Department of Community Health Sciences under the supervision of Dr. Robert Tate.

Contact: yussufhs@myumanitoba.ca

Gary Tong | Communications

Gary is currently an undergraduate student in Computer Science at the University of Manitoba. He previously obtained an honours Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Western Ontario in Biology/Medical Science. Gary has worked on previous research projects in statistical genetics, cell biology and bioinformatics. Most recently, Gary was supervised as a summer student by Dr. Michelle Liu at the University of Manitoba and his project was focused on identifying identity-by-descent segments in Autism Spectrum Disorders using the Autism Genome Project database.

Contact: tongg@myumanitoba.ca