Researching tick-borne diseases for the future of Canadian health.

Dr. Nick Ogden

Public Health Agency of Canada

Plenary talk title: Emergence of Lyme disease in Canada: a 20 year journey from a hypothesis to a public health reality

Dr. Nick Ogden is a UK-trained veterinarian with a doctorate in vector-borne disease ecology and post-doctoral training in disease modelling. He is a senior research scientist and Director of Modelling Hub division within the Science-Policy Integration Branch of the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), focusing on assessing disease risk by study of the ecology, epidemiology and genetic diversity of vectors and zoonotic and vector-borne micro-organisms. A key component of his work is assessing impacts of climate change on zoonoses and vector-borne diseases, and developing tools for public health adaptation. His team conducts PHAC’s infectious disease modelling encompassing COVID-19, MPOX, vector-borne diseases, and measles in recent years.

Dr. Brian Fallon

Columbia University

Plenary talk title: Approaches to the Treatment of Lyme Infection-associated Chronic Illness

Brian Fallon MD MPH is Director of the Lyme and Tick-borne Diseases Research Center at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City.  As a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia, Dr. Fallon’s research has focused on the neuropsychiatric aspects of Lyme disease as well as on investigating varying treatment approaches to those with persistent symptoms, including repeated antibiotics, yoga, repurposed pharmacotherapies, and brain stimulation. Currently Dr. Fallon leads a national Clinical Trials Network for Tick-borne Diseases in the United States (www.lymectn.org). He has served on national committees in the U.S., including the NIH Clinical Trials Steering Committee for Long COVID and the HHS Tick-borne Disease Working Groups. 

Dr. Manish Kulkarni

University of Ottawa

Plenary talk title: Tracking the emergence of Lyme disease in Canada’s capital: from socio-ecological drivers to community-informed solutions

Manisha Kulkarni is a Professor at the School of Epidemiology and Public Health in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa with expertise in medical entomology, disease ecology and spatial epidemiology. She is the Scientific Director of the Canadian Lyme Disease Research Network (CLyDRN) / TickNet Canada and holds a University Research Chair in Climate Change and Emerging Diseases.

Dr. Kulkarni leads the Interdisciplinary Spatial Informatics for Global Health (INSIGHT) research lab at uOttawa, which uses field, laboratory and geospatial approaches to assess the impacts of climate and environmental changes on vector-borne disease transmission and risk in global settings. Her research on tick-borne diseases in Canada is supported by grants from CIHR, PHAC, NSERC and others, and aims to investigate the socio-ecological determinants of tick-borne disease risk in peri-urban settings, and the evaluation of interventions to improve tick-borne disease prevention and climate change adaptation strategies.