Dr. Hugues Allard-Chamard is a highly accomplished medical professional and researcher with a multidisciplinary background.

He earned his MD PhD degree from Université de Sherbrooke, where he successfully merged his interests in rheumatology and pharmacology. During his doctoral research, he made significant contributions to the field by investigating the crucial role of prostanoids and phospholipase A2 in osteoclast biology, shedding new light on osteoimmunology.

His dedication to understanding the intricate relationship between immunology and bone health has earned him recognition among peers and scholars.

Dr. Koppikar is a rheumatologist at Women’s College Hospital and Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto. His clinical and research interests focus on point-of-care musculoskeletal ultrasound in inflammatory arthritis, and he is actively involved in the clinical, research, and educational work of the WCH Psoriatic Arthritis Program. He holds a Master of Health Professions Education from Maastricht University and is the current Education and Basic Course Director for the Canadian Rheumatology Ultrasound Society (CRUS). He also has a strong interest in innovative models of care, particularly in regional and remote settings, and serves as Director of the Timmins Arthritis Program, delivering multidisciplinary arthritis care across Northeastern Ontario.

Dr. Mary-Ann Fitzcharles is a clinician, teacher and clinical researcher at McGill University, Montreal, Canada since 1982. She is a founder member of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada specialty committee for Pain Medicine, is a past chair of the Canadian Rheumatology Association (CRA) Therapeutics committee and has led the Canadian Fibromyalgia Guidelines and the CRA 2019 position statement on Medical Cannabis. 

Dr. Eugene Krustev is a rheumatologist and clinician-scientist specializing in idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIM). His research focuses on biomarker discovery, disease mechanisms, and novel therapeutics in IIM. He completed his medical training at Memorial University, residency and rheumatology fellowship at the University of Calgary, and a clinical-research fellowship in myositis at Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Alexandra Legge is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Rheumatology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she currently holds the Quigley Family Endowed Chair in Rheumatology Research. She is an adult rheumatologist and is currently the Director of the Dalhousie Lupus Clinic and Principal Investigator for the Dalhousie Lupus Clinic Registry. She also collaborates with international lupus researchers as a member of the Systemic Lupus International Collaborating Clinics (SLICC) and Chair of the SLICC World Lupus Committee. One of her research interests is the impact of frailty on people living with rheumatic diseases.

Dr. Mai is a clinical assistant professor for the Division of Rheumatology at UBC. She started the first Sjogren’s clinic in BC, where she sees complex Sjogren’s patients referred from around the province. She is involved with several Sjogren’s research initiatives at this clinic, including participation in international clinical trials for novel Sjogren’s therapeutics.

Dr. Liam O’Neil is an associate professor of Internal Medicine and Immunology at the Max Rady College of Medicine at the University of Manitoba. Dr. O’Neil completed his clinical training in 2017 at the University of Manitoba, and research training at the National Institutes of Health/Duke School of Medicine in 2019. He joined the U of M as faculty in 2020 as an academic rheumatologist and member of the Manitoba Centre for Proteomics and Systems Biology. As a clinician-scientist, his research program focuses on the pre-clinical phase of rheumatoid arthritis, with the ultimate goal of preventing RA in at-risk individuals.

Denis Poddubnyy, MD, PhD, MSc (Epi), is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto.

In 2014, he received board certification in internal medicine and rheumatology and completed his postdoctoral thesis (Habilitation) at the Charité Medical University in Berlin, Germany, focusing on the prediction and prevention of disease progression in early axial spondyloarthritis.

He earned a Master’s degree in Epidemiology from the Institute of Public Health in Berlin in 2016. That same year, he was appointed Professor and Head of Rheumatology at Campus Benjamin Franklin of the Charité, and became the leader of the Spondyloarthritis research group at the German Rheumatology Research Centre (DRFZ).

In July 2024, he was appointed to a full-time clinical academic position in the Division of Rheumatology, Department of Medicine, at the University of Toronto, with the rank of Professor, and as a Senior Scientist at the Schroeder Arthritis Institute, University Health Network, in Toronto, Canada. He serves as Director of the Advanced Imaging Program and Co-Director of both the Psoriatic Arthritis Program and the Clinical Trial Unit.

Since 2003, his research has focused on the early diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes of patients with spondyloarthritis, including psoriatic arthritis. Dr. Poddubnyy is a member of the Executive Committee of the Assessment of SpondyloArthritis International Society (ASAS) and a member of the Steering Committee, as well as the Research and Publication Committees, of the Group for Research and Assessment of Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis (GRAPPA). He also serves on the Research Committee of the Spondyloarthritis Research and Treatment Network (SPARTAN).

He is the author of more than 350 publications, including peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters.

Dr. Shane Shapera, is a respirologist and Associate Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. He is the Director of the Interstitial Lung Disease (ILD) Program at Toronto General Hospital, where he leads a multidisciplinary program focused on the diagnosis and management of complex ILD, including connective tissue disease–associated ILD. Dr. Shapera is actively involved in clinical care, research, and education, with a particular interest in bridging pulmonology and rheumatology to improve outcomes for patients with fibrotic and autoimmune-related lung disease. He also collaborates with the Toronto Lung Transplant Program, contributing to the assessment of transplant canadidacy in patients with advanced ILD.

Dr. Évelyne Vinet is an associate professor in the Division of Rheumatology at McGill and Co-Director of the McGill Lupus Research Clinic. She leads the McGill Reproductive Rheumatology Clinic. Dr. Vinet is also a medical scientist for the Centre for Health Outcomes Research at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre, and a member of the McGill Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health.  

The primary goal of Dr. Vinet’s research program is to improve reproductive health outcomes in women with rheumatic diseases, such as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and their offspring. To this end, Dr. Vinet has created the world’s largest cohort of offspring born to SLE women, which has driven her novel findings demonstrating that SLE offspring are at increased risk of autism spectrum disorders, congenital heart defects, and stillbirths. Dr. Vinet also led research initiatives to elucidate how therapies used to treat rheumatic diseases (e.g. TNF inhibitors and other biologics) impact health outcomes in these patients and their offspring. Finally, Dr. Vinet is leading an international multi-centre prospective cohort study, the “Lupus in prEGnACY (LEGACY).” cohort, to ultimately establish early risk stratification and personalized therapy of lupus pregnancies.