Advisory Board

  Dr. Paul Dorian is the Department Director, Division of Cardiology, University of Toronto and Staff Cardiac Electrophysiologist at St. Michael’s Hospital. He is Professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology and in the Division of Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Toronto, and a Staff Scientist at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute.

Dr. Dorian received his medical degree from McGill University in Montreal in 1976. He continued training in Internal Medicine and Cardiology at the University of Toronto, and received certification by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in Internal Medicine in 1983 and certification in Cardiology in 1984. He completed training in Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Toronto in 1982, and received an MSc in Pharmacology from the University of Toronto in 1982. From 1983 to 1985, he completed a Fellowship in Cardiac Electrophysiology at Stanford University Medical Centre in California.

His research interests include basic science research in advanced cardiac life support, and atrial fibrillation, the clinical pharmacology of antiarrhythmic drugs, and clinical research on implanted devices, antiarrhythmic drugs, and quality of life in patients with arrhythmias.

He is a Co-PI on the NIH funded Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium, and Chair of the arrhythmia section of the CaNNECTIN Canadian cardiovascular clinical trials collaborative , and serves on the steering committee of several multicenter clinical trials in arrhythmia care.

 Timothy Chan is the Canada Research Chair in Novel Optimization and Analytics in Health, a Professor in the department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, the Director of the Centre for Healthcare Engineering, and the Director of the Centre for Analytics and AI Engineering at the University of Toronto. He received his BSc in Applied Mathematics from the University of British Columbia (2002), and his PhD in Operations Research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2007). Professor Chan was an Associate in the Chicago office of McKinsey and Company, a global management consulting firm (2007-2009). During that time, he advised leading companies in the fields of medical device technology, travel and hospitality, telecommunications, and energy on issues of strategy, organization, technology and operations.

Professor Chan’s primary research interests are in optimization under uncertainty and the application of optimization methods to problems in healthcare, medicine, global engineering, sustainability, and sports. He received the George B. Dantzig Dissertation Award from INFORMS (2007), an Early Researcher Award from the Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation of Ontario (2012), an Early Career Teaching Award from both the U of T Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (2012) and the U of T Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering (2013), second place in the INFORMS Section on Public Programs, Service and Needs best paper competition (2012), and first place in the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference research paper competition (2013). His research has been featured by the CBC, CTV News, the Toronto Star, and Canadian Business magazine.

 Dr. Katherine Allan is a senior research associate, specializing in arrhythmia research with a focus on sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) prediction and prevention, meta-analyses, patient oriented research and mandating CPR and AED training in schools. She is the project manager for the National SCA Registry (C-SCAN), a Canadian Arrhythmia Network (CANet) - Canadian Resuscitation Outcomes (CanROC) collaboration. She is the founder and former chair of CARE, Cardiac Arrest Response and Education, a grassroots organization trying to increase survival from SCA through various community based endeavors.

She has extensive background with both in-hospital and out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and resuscitation research including simulation and education to encourage best practices. She recently completed her PhD at the Institute of Medical Science, University of Toronto (U of T) in collaboration with the Electrophysiology Research Department at St. Michael's Hospital. Her project assessed the incidence, etiology and familial risk for SCA in young individuals (ages 2-45) and their family members. 

In addition, she used simulation as an educational tool for in-hospital cardiac arrest. Her interest is in using different training modalities to achieve best practice for BLS and ACLS. She helped develop an innovative BLS training program for healthcare providers and evaluated the effect of mock arrests carried out on the wards to optimize the quality and timing of response to in-hospital emergencies.

Specialties: Cardiac arrest, sudden death, sudden cardiac death, resuscitation, arrhythmias, CPR, BLS, ACLS, simulation, electrophysiology, patient oriented research, meta-analyses, debriefing, clinical research, research methodology, technical writing, research ethics. 

 Michael Wilson is a partner in the Dispute Resolution Group at Goodmans. He acts for public and private companies, directors and officers, and government agencies in litigation and arbitration, focusing on corporate, commercial, administrative law 

and regulatory matters.

Michael has appeared before the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, the Federal Court of Canada, and international and domestic arbitration panels.

Until recently, Michael served as the chief of staff to the Attorney General of Ontario. Providing strategic counsel to two successive Attorneys General, Michael led the development and implementation of substantial legislative reform, including the modernization of legislation related to Ontario’s crown liability, class actions, civil forfeiture, police oversight, construction and legal aid. He routinely advised on policy development related to regulated professions and industries, including those regulated by the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (alcohol, gaming, and cannabis). In particular, Michael was instrumental in the design of Ontario’s Cannabis Licence Act and Cannabis Control Act that provide the framework for Ontario’s open-market, privately-operated cannabis retail market.

In addition to his litigation practice, Michael continues to build on his experience advising decision-makers in the federal and provincial government by assisting clients with crisis mandates and strategic policy and regulatory advice.  He advises corporate clients and industry associations in developing legislative and regulatory proposals that respond to complex and urgent policy challenges.

Dr. Steven C. Brooks, MD, MHSc, FRCPC is a Clinician-Scientist and Emergency Physician in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Queen’s University. He completed his medical training at Queen’s University and then went on to a residency in Emergency Medicine at the University of British Columbia where he also completed a Master’s in Health Sciences. He completed a clinical research fellowship in pre-hospital and transport medicine at the University of Toronto. 

Dr. Brooks conducts research in the areas of cardiac arrest and resuscitation. Specifically, his research is focused around methods of improving bystander resuscitation for victims of out of hospital cardiac arrest. He is the principal investigator of the PulsePoint randomized controlled trial involving a crowdsourcing mobile device application for basic life support during out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. The Neighbours Saving Neighbours study is a pilot program measuring the feasibility of a volunteer community first responder program for cardiac arrest in neighbourhoods at risk for prolonged ambulance response time. Dr. Brooks has a special interest in innovative methods to improve public access defibrillation and led an international task force in the development of a scientific statement from the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation on this topic. Dr. Brooks is a member of the Resuscitation Advisory Committee of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada and the Immediate Past Chair of the Science Subcommittee within the American Heart Association Emergency Cardiovascular Care Committee. 

Dr. Brooks is the Ontario lead for the Canadian COVID-19 Emergency Department Rapid Response Network (CCEDRRN) and conducts research into the epidemiology and health services aspects of COVID-19. He is the PI on a CIHR-funded investigation measuring COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness using data from this network in Ontario and administrative data from the Institute of Clinical Evaluative Sciences. 

Dr. Brooks joined a start-up company in Australia called Rapid Response Revival as their Chief Medical Officer in March 2022. This company manufactures the CellAED (www.cellaed.io) which is the world’s first miniaturized, single-use automated external defibrillator designed for personal access and household deployment. 

Dr. Richard Verbeek is currently a courtesy Emergency Physician at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and an Assistant Professor in the Division of Emergency Medicine at the University of Toronto. 

Dr. Verbeek received his medical degree from McGill University in Montreal in 1983. He continued training in Emergency Medicine and received certification by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in Emergency Medicine in 1988. 

Dr. Verbeek has over 25 years of past service as medical director for the Toronto Paramedic Services paramedic programs and the Toronto Fire Services First Responder program. He has also acted as a past chair of the Ontario Base Hospital Group Medical Advisory Committee. He has overseen the clinical care provided to Toronto’s citizens by thousands of paramedics and firefighters. He also contributed to the establishment Toronto’s Cardiac Safe City Program which has now helped to place over 1,500 AEDs in public locations and private businesses and trains more than 10,000 AED public responders annually. He was also the founding medical director of the Toronto Police Services Marine 

Police Unit AED program. 

His research interests include pre-hospital clinical research in cardiac 

and severe trauma resuscitation.

His work in advancing pre-hospital clinical care has been recognized by the National Association of EMS Physicians, the Ministry of Health of Ontario, the Ontario Office of the Fire Marshall, and the City of Toronto.

Dr.  Mali Worme, MD MPH FRCPC is a heart failure cardiologist and echocardiographer. She did her medical school training at McGill University where she graduated as the Gold Medalist. She went on to do Internal Medicine and Cardiology residencies at the University of Toronto. She completed fellowship training in advanced heart failure at the University Health Network and then pursued an advanced echocardiography fellowship at King’s College Hospital in London, England. She returned to UHN in January 2024, where she is based at Toronto Western Hospital. Her academic interests include access to AEDs as well as improving access to cardiovascular care for underserved populations. She was involved in the initial advocacy efforts for Bill 141, and acted as a consultant to the ministry of health for the bylaws of Bill 141. 

Dr. Heather Ross CM, MD, DSc, MHSc, FRCP (C), FACC is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto, and Head of the Division of Cardiology at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre. She received the Order of Canada in 2020 (CM), and an Honorary Doctor of Science (DSc) from Queen’s University 2021. She is the Scientific lead for the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research, and holds the Loretta A. Rogers Chair in Heart Function and the Pfizer Chair in Cardiovascular Research. She received her medical degree from the University of British Columbia, Canada, Cardiology training at Dalhousie University, and Postdoctoral Fellowship in Cardiac Transplantation at Stanford University, California. She earned her Master’s Degree in Bioethics from the University of Toronto. She has published over 400 peer reviewed articles, with an H index of 73 and > 23k citations, trained > 45 highly qualified personnel and received > 40 million dollars in peer reviewed research funding. She has won numerous awards including Inventor of the year (UHN 2022), the Canadian Society of Transplantation Lifetime Achievement Award (2022), the inaugural CCS Women in Cardiovascular Medicine/Science Mentorship Award (2020) and the Canadian Heart Failure Society Annual Achievement Award (2019).  Professor of Medicine, Head Division of Cardiology at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre, Site Lead Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research 

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