Team

Faculty

Madhukar Pai, MD, PhD, FRSC

@paimadhu – madhukar.pai@mcgill.ca

Prof. Madhukar Pai, MD, PhD, FRSC, is a Canada Research Chair in Epidemiology and Global Health, and inaugural Chair of the Department of Global and Public Health, School of Population and Global Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, at McGill University, Montreal.

He did his medical training and community medicine residency in Vellore, India. He completed his PhD in epidemiology at UC Berkeley, and a postdoctoral fellowship at the UCSF.

Madhu served as a Consultant to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for 8 years, was the Director of McGill University’s Global Health Programs from 2014 to 2020 and the Director of the McGill International TB Centre from 2018 to 2020. He has served on the STAG-TB and SAGE-IVD committees of WHO, Geneva, and currently serves on the WHO STAG-TB Southeast Asia, the WHO Advisory group on Tuberculosis Diagnostics, the Scientific Advisory Committee of FIND, Geneva, and on the Expert Group on Tuberculosis Prevention and Control of the Global Coalition Against Tuberculosis (GCAT) among others. He has been a Commissioner on two Lancet Commissions (on TB and Diagnostics), and is currently the inaugural Editor-in-Chief of PLoS Global Public Health. He is on many editorial boards, including Lancet Infectious Diseases and PLoS Medicine.

Madhu’s research is mainly focused on improving the diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis, especially in high-burden countries like India. His research has been supported by grant funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada, and Canadian Institutes of Health Research. He has more than 360 peer-reviewed publications. He is a recipient of the Union Scientific Prize, Chanchlani Global Health Research Award, and Haile T. Debas Prize. He is an elected fellow of both the Royal Society of Canada, and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.

Academic CV

Caroline Vadnais, P.Eng.

caroline.vadnais@affiliate.mcgill.ca

Caroline graduated from Polytechnique Montréal as a mechanical engineer. She worked for a consumer magazine for 9 years, as a project manager and then as the test department coordinator, conducting product comparative evaluations. In 2010, she joined the team as a research manager, providing logistical and administrative support to the group’s research portfolio and team.

Zarin Abdullah, MBBS, MPH, MScEpi

@ZarinAbdullah88 – zarin.abdullah@mail.mcgill.ca

Zarin graduated with an MSc in Epidemiology from McGill University, where her research focused on the potential cognitive benefits of antidiabetic agents. She also holds an MPH from North South University, Bangladesh, and an MBBS from Chittagong University, Bangladesh. With over five years of experience managing multidisciplinary public health research projects at icddr,b, Zarin collaborated with the CDC Atlanta, CDC Foundation, and Gates Foundation, with a focus on infectious disease epidemiology and surveillance. Currently, she is a member of the Pai team, where her work centers on projects related to continuous glucose monitoring and tuberculosis diagnostics.

Ashlyn Beecroft, MSc

Ashlyn graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Life Sciences from McMaster University. She then went on to complete her Master’s degree in Experimental Medicine at McGill. During her master’s research, she studied HIV self-testing and digital health diagnostics. This is where she discovered her passion for clinical research and decided to pursue a career in health diagnostics.

Petra Heitkamp, MPH

@petraheitkamp – petra.heitkamp@affiliate.mcgill.ca

Petra is a Community Manager/Director at the McGill International TB Centre, managing an online community on private health provider engagement in TB control.

Petra graduated from Maastricht University with a Masters of Public Health focusing on Health Promotion and Health Management & Policy. She has done Global Health courses including at Hertie School of Governance in Berlin and at University of Ottawa, and taught courses and moderated workshops around the world. Her interests are in applying effective collaborative approaches, health systems and community empowerment to advance public health interventions, specifically in infectious diseases.

She worked at the Stop TB Partnership and WHO/TB for several years, including based in India and Indonesia, forging partnerships and creating advocacy strategies among stakeholders from global agencies to grassroots tribal leaders. In recent years she has been consulting for development and policy programs at international and field levels.

Vivian Qiang, MScPH

vivian.qiang@mail.mcgill.ca

Vivian (she/her) graduated with a Master of Science in Public Health degree at McGill University. She currently serves as a Project Manager with the O’Neill-Lancet Commission on Racism, Structural Discrimination and Global Health to identify and study positive outliers in reducing health inequities. Previously, Vivian has also worked in health equity policy and intersectional analysis at the Public Health Agency of Canada and conducted research in the ethics of artificial intelligence in health.

Surbhi Sheokand, MBBS, MSc

surbhi.sheokand@affiliate.mcgill.ca

Dr. Surbhi Sheokand completed her MBBS from Rajasthan University of Health Sciences and worked as a clinician in India for seven years. In 2018, she was awarded the British Council Scholarship for Women in STEM to pursue an MSc in Global Public Health & Policy at Queen Mary University London. Following this, she became a Public Health Manager for the National Health Mission in her hometown of Hisar in northern India. Later, she joined PATH as a Program Officer and played a crucial role in introducing innovative approaches such as lab automation, point-of-care Covid-19 testing, and establishing Punjab’s first NGS lab by collaborating with the Health Ministry of Punjab. Recently, Surbhi worked as a State Manager for the USAID-RISE project at FIND, where she provided technical support to Health Ministries across Indian states and significantly improved the nation’s diagnostic capacities. She is excited to join the Pai team and is eager to engage in continuous learning alongside the outstanding members.

Shashika Bandara, MScGH, PhD

@shashikaLB

Shashika Bandara is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Global Public Health in the School of Population and Global Health at McGill University. He co-leads the research project on O’Neill-Lancet Commission on Racism, Structural Discrimination and Global Health with Dr. Ananya Banerjee, under the guidance of Prof. Madhukar Pai. His research and advocacy focus on global health policy and governance. His PhD examined the global health treaty, the Framework Convention of Tobacco Control implementation in low- and middle-income countries. He holds a masters in global health from Duke University and is formerly a policy associate at the Center for Policy Impact in Global Health at the Duke Global Health Institute. He also has experience in human rights and humanitarian sectors.

Poshan Thapa, MPH, PhD

poshan.thapa@mail.mcgill.ca

Poshan holds a PhD in Public Health from the University of New South Wales, Australia, and a Master’s degree in Public Health from Manipal University, India. Before pursuing his PhD, he served as Director of Research and Evaluation and District Director of Community Healthcare at Possible in Nepal. Additionally, he contributed to academia both as an instructor and lecturer at Pokhara University, Nepal. With over 20 peer-reviewed publications, Poshan possesses a diverse experience in the field of public health, spanning both practical fieldwork and academic research. His passion lies in tuberculosis care, informal healthcare providers, community-based healthcare, primary care, and private-sector engagement in health.

Alexandra Zimmer, BSc, MSPH

Alex competed her BSc in Molecular Biology at the University of Toronto and her MSPH in International Health at Johns Hopkins University where she first became involved in TB research. Bringing together her molecular knowledge, interest in infectious diseases, and passion for global health, Alex joined the Pai team to pursue a PhD in epidemiology. Her work will focus on the application of diagnostics in routine public health practice for TB prevention and control in low-resource settings.

Jeyashree Kathiresan, MBBS, MD

Dr. Jeyashree Kathiresan is a public health expert working as a medical scientist at India’s apex medical research institute, the Indian Council of Medical Research- National Institute of Epidemiology. She is also a faculty at the Field Epidemiology Training Program (FETP)- Master in Public Heath(MPH) course with over a decade of experience in teaching medical undergraduates, graduates and public health scholars. She chooses to work on research questions that emerge from the community she lives in and works with seemingly simple questions that need an effective and evidence-based solution. She is well published and predominantly works on impact of public health interventions on infectious diseases control. While currently working on providing essential pieces of evidence on the impact of cash benefits on tuberculosis control in India, her goal is to be an instrument to enable equitable distribution of health across communities.

Luz Villa, MD

luz.villacastillo@mail.mcgill.ca

Dr. Luz Villa is a Peruvian MD trained in human rights, international humanitarian law, and ethics in research. She worked as a research coordinator at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Peru in the elaboration, implementation, and conduct of clinical trials for diagnostics of infectious diseases like tuberculosis, HIV and COVID-19. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she worked as an Epidemiologist Officer developing clinical guidelines and assisting the COVID-19 vaccination strategy in Peru. Luz has worked more than a year at FIND, a WHO Collaborating Centre, as clinical trial manager in the FEND consortium, a NIH grant evaluating early-stage TB diagnostics and in a TB study with the Kharkiv University in Ukraine. She joined Dr. Pai’s team as a M.Sc. Epidemiology candidate. She aims to generate evidence-based policies that contribute to the access of universal health care from a human rights-based approach.