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Tara Donovan, MSc
Director, PICNet
Tara holds a Master’s of Science in Community Health and Epidemiology and complete the infection prevention & control certificate, both at Queen’s University in Ontario. She began her career as an Epidemiologist in Public Health before moving to British Columbia and working more specifically for the Infection Prevention and Control program at Fraser Health. After years of leading surveillance initiatives, Tara transitioned to Managing Consultant and supervised team members while fostering her leadership abilities. Tara joined PICNet in June 2018 as the Network Director and her time with PICNet has focused on a variety of projects and initiatives, notably co-leading the provincial COVID-19 pandemic response for healthcare settings. Collaboration and connection with health authority and Ministry of Health partners was paramount during the pandemic and continues to be instrumental to accomplishing provincial infection prevention and control priorities under Tara’s guidance. Tara is an active member of IPAC Canada and IPAC BC, having held a variety of executive and board positions and was a module instructor for the IPAC Canada Essentials course. She is also an editor of the Canadian Journal of Infection Control.
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Dr. Titus Wong, MD, MHSc, FRCPC
Medical Director, PICNet
A collaborator at heart, Titus is an experienced medical leader who has a passion for improving safety and wellness for British Columbians. Titus joined PICNet as Medical Director in January 2020, with a clinical background in Medical Microbiology, Infection Prevention and Control, and Clinical Epidemiology. He currently serves as an Executive Medical Director in Medical Affairs at PHSA, overseeing a portfolio that includes Infection Prevention and Control, Medical Staff Physical Safety, Psychological Safety, and Wellness. Titus also works at the BCCDC Public Health laboratory as a medical microbiologist and is the BCCDC Medical Director for IPAC and Community Health. Titus has a longstanding interest in improving environmental infection control for patients and staff in healthcare settings through an innovation lens. He has collaborated with clinicians, researchers and industry on the use of antimicrobial copper in healthcare, ultraviolet disinfection, and clean air strategies. Titus also led the development of, and serves as the medical director of the BC/VCH PPE-testing laboratory, Canada’s first ISO-accredited, healthcare-based PPE testing laboratory supporting Canadian healthcare and industry to provide safe PPE for Canadians during the pandemic and beyond. Titus is a dedicated educator and a strong believer in investing in tomorrow’s healthcare leaders. Through the UBC Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Titus is a UBC Medical School lecturer, sits on the UBC Medical Microbiology residency training committee as the fellowship advisor, and serves as the course co-director for the UBC Infection Prevention and Control Certificate course. Titus is extremely proud of PICNet’s provincial leadership and contributions throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and is honoured to continue serving British Columbians through PICNet.
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Andrea Vu-Tran, MOA, MLA
Administrative Assistant
Andrea comes to PICNet with much experience, having worked in a variety of administrative roles and varied settings, notably in healthcare clinics and hospitals. Andrea’s diverse skillset, warm personality, and positive energy are wonderful additions to the PICNet team.
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Noorsallah Esmail, BMLSc, MPH, CIPC
Senior Practice Leader
Noorsallah first joined PICNet in 2020 as an Education & Practice Coordinator, bringing extensive healthcare knowledge and experience from various infection prevention and control (IPC) positions in both acute and community care settings. Her areas of expertise include development and implementation of IPC best practice guidelines and educational resources for infectious diseases, outbreak management, medical device reprocessing of critical and semi-critical equipment and beyond. She also has specific knowledge of IPC in regard to facility planning and construction. Noorsallah has led provincial-level task groups to develop various guidelines, IPC education modules, and additional precautions signs for health care professionals, patients and families across the continuum of care in BC. She also played an integral role in the pandemic response. Noorsallah appreciates her role because of the collaboration and contributions from multidisciplinary partners that enable completion of provincial initiatives.
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Katherine Sunderland, MPH
Senior Epidemiologist
Katherine Sunderland has nearly twenty years of experience in epidemiology, biostatistics, and health research. She previously worked as an Epidemiologist at CancerCare Manitoba and a Senior Methodologist at BC Cancer, contributing to over 50 publications. Katherine has also served on the UBC Cancer Research Ethics Board and taught Advanced Predictive Analytics and Time Series and Forecasting with UBC’s Sauder School of Business. As PICNet’s Senior Epidemiologist, Katherine leads surveillance of antibiotic-resistant organisms, including Carbapanemase Producing Organisms (CPO), Methicillan-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA), and Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI). She was also instrumental in launching hospital surveillance of respiratory illnesses including SARS-CoV-2, Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) and Influenza. She directs the PICNet surveillance team to enhance existing surveillance programs, consider new opportunities, and develop innovative reporting tools. Katherine provides her research methodology and biostatistics knowledge to direct and lead research and publication efforts. A key focus of her work is building strategic partnerships to ensure surveillance initiatives meet provincial infection prevention and control needs.
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Yosuf Kaliwal, MPH
Surveillance Epidemiologist
Yosuf comes to PICNet with a background in Epidemiology. He has worked in various roles in public health including roles at Ontario's Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services, the Public Health Agency of Canada, and ICES. His past work includes working as an analyst for multiple research projects at ICES, including projects related to cancer, mental health and COVID-19. He holds a Master's of Public Health with a specialization in Epidemiology from the University of Toronto. In his current role Yosuf assists in key processes for several of PICNet's surveillance programs (i.e. CPO, MRSA, CDI etc.). He appreciates the hard work needed to maintain provincial surveillance programs and enjoys connecting with his colleagues on a regular basis.
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Sabbir Hossain, MSc
Surveillance Systems Coordinator
Sabbir is the Provincial Surveillance Coordinator for healthcare-associated infections (HAI) where he maintains large databases, ensures data quality and integrity, monitors trends of HAI, performs quantitative analysis, and prepares reports, dashboards, and surveillance manuals. He also coordinates the Provincial Respiratory Illness (RI) Surveillance System for Acute Care, providing timely situational awareness of RI burden to inform infection prevention and control strategies. Sabbir comes to PICNet with more than five years of research experience in infectious disease (COVID-19, child respiratory infections), chronic disease epidemiology, and developing economics with sound knowledge of epidemiological study design, causal inference, time-series analysis, and numerous advanced epidemiological and statistical techniques. Sabbir holds a Master of Science in Population and Public Health with a specialization in Epidemiology from UBC, and both a Bachelor's and Master's of Science in Statistics from Bangladesh. Sabbir also has experience as a teaching assistant in UBC’s Statistics and Public Health departments, instructing undergrad students in elementary statistics and graduate (MSc, MPH, Ph.D.) students in advanced epidemiological methods. Apart from academic skills, Sabbir has gained strong leadership, networking, and team management experience at UBC as Chair of one of the Graduate Student Society’s committees and as Representative of population and public health grad students at UBC.
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Samar Hejazi, PhD
Lead, Research and Knowledge Translation
Samar completed her post-doctoral fellowship at the School of Nursing, University of British Columbia, in 2012, gaining a strong conceptual and empirical understanding of social and environmental factors impacting health and wellbeing. Subsequently, she joined Fraser Health, where for over eleven years, she provided consultation to researchers, clinicians, and medical and pharmacy students on research design and methodological approaches. Additionally, through her academic work and research experience, she developed expertise in analyzing complex data sets using various advanced analytic procedures and has contributed to study dissemination by writing reports and reviewing manuscripts. Since joining PICNet in August of 2023, Samar has been responsible for supporting evidence-based practices in infection prevention and control. Her role involves appraising and synthesizing evidence, drafting recommendations, and contributing to the development of best practice guidelines. Additionally, Samar supports the development of evaluation frameworks for PICNet strategic plans and priorities.
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Madeline Koeberling, BDes
Graphics and Production Specialist
As part of PHSA’s Transformation Leadership Office, Madeline supports PICNet and other teams across the organization with design, production, and consultation on various projects, including PICNet’s quarterly surveillance reports. Madeline holds a Bachelor of Design in Graphic Design for Marketing from Kwantlen Polytechnic University, and has previously worked with not-for-profit organizations designing marketing, branding, and educational collateral for a range of audiences.
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Georgia Neindorf, BSC
Project Manager
Georgia comes to PICNet with over 12 years experience working with health authorities both in Australia and in Canada. She has worked in various roles with PHSA over the last 5 years, most recently as Business Analyst and Project Support for Provincial Laboratory Medicine Services (PLMS) where she supported the Provincial Lab Emergency Operation Centre response to COVID-19, as well as project management to a variety of projects including the Implementation of Diagnostic Whole Genome Sequencing for Rare Diseases in BC, Adoption of Synoptic Reporting, and Point of Use Water Testing. Georgia completed her Bachelor of Science (Health Promotion) through Curtin University in Australia.
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Raunika Lertnamvongwan, BHSC
Research Assistant
Raunika is a recent Bachelor of Science (Health Sciences) graduate from Simon Fraser University. With over 5 years of experience in healthcare, her roles have included Clinical Research Assistant at Fraser Health, Laboratory Assistant at Bureau Veritas Laboratories, Pharmacy Assistant, and Team Lead for the Canadian Red Cross’ Health Equipment Loan Program. Raunika supports the PICNet team by contributing to evidence synthesis and guideline development for projects such as Infection Prevention and Control Best Practices for Medical Device Reprocessing. She also conducts literature searches for the surveillance team and assists with website design and updates.
