Former team members
Lab management
Jian-Jun Jia
Jian-Jun has worked in Ottawa for many years and worked in the Lochmüller lab as a research assistant.
Heather Howley
Heather is the Director of Precision Health Analytics, advising Hanns and the broader team on funding avenues, research development, academic writing, and grantsmanship. She completed her MS in 2000 and since 2018, has helped secure $8M in peer-reviewed funding for the Lochmüller Lab.
Postdoctoral fellows
Emily Freeman
Dr. Emily Freeman worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Lochmüller Lab from 2023-2024.
Emily O’Connor
Emily completed her PhD at Newcastle University in 2019 under the supervision of Professors Hanns Lochmüller and Clarke Slater and joined the Lochmüller lab to continue her work into testing new treatments for CMS.
Anu Mary Varghese
Anu is a post-doctoral fellow working on gene therapy for congenital myasthenic syndromes (CMS) and on biomarkers for myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1).
Students
Ofosu Adjei-Afriyie
Ofosu Adjei-Afriyie is a Master’s student in Cellular and Molecular Medicine. Ofosu’s research is focused on insulin resistance in Myotonic Dystrophy Type 1 (DM1).
Stephen Holland
Stephen has joined the Lochmüller Lab for his PhD, having completed an MSc degree looking at post-translational modifications affecting pannexin 1 protein channels in neuroblastoma.
Danny Jomaa
Danny is currently a second-year medical student at Queen’s University and is joining the Lochmüller Lab as a summer research student for summer 2020 for a bioinformatics-focused project investigating pediatric CMS patients without a molecular diagnosis.
Pierrot Lundimu Tugirimana
Pierrot completed a Master of Science in Clinical Science and Translational Medicine with the Lochmüller Lab in 2025.
Katelyn Maclellan
Katelyn was a summer student who worked with Dr. Lochmüller’s clinical trials team at the OHRI in the summer of 2025.
Alexander Manta
Following the completion of his Masters degree, Alex started studying Medicine at the University of Ottawa. He has joined the Lochmüller lab to work on a project investigating the therapeutic potential of Smac-mimetic compounds on neuromuscular diseases.
Katerina Palacek
Katerina is a medical student at the University of Ottawa. She worked as a summer student in the Lochmüller Lab from 2023-2025 studying optogenetic zebrafish models for novel gene discovery in congenital myasthenic syndromes.
Kaitlyn Quinlan
Kaitlyn Quinlan has just completed her second undergraduate year in Neuroscience and Mental Health at Carleton University and is joined the Lochmüller lab for summer 2019.
Clinical Research
Brenda Barasa
Brenda is responsible for coordinating Dr. Lochmüller’s Neuromuscular clinic at The Ottawa Hospital and occasionally at CHEO.
Marc-Olivier Deguise
Marc-Olivier Deguise is currently a pediatric resident physician at Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario and has been involved with the SMA community through a research lens for the past eight years. He recently joined Dr. Lochmüller’s Lab to contribute to the clinical research aspect of the research program.
Astrid Eisenkölbl
Dr. Astrid Eisenkölbl is a pediatric neurologist with specialization in neuromuscular medicine at the Department for Paediatric and Adolescent Medicine at the Kepler University Hospital in Linz, Austria.
Isabelle Fisette-Paulhus
Isabelle worked as a clinical evaluator for various neuromuscular disease trials with Dr. Hanns Lochmüller at CHEO and The Ottawa Hospital from 2019-2022. In February 2022, she joined The Ottawa Hospital as a clinical research coordinator. She now works as a physiotherapist at Centre d’hébergement et de soins de longue durée (CHSLD) La Pietà in Gatineau, Quebec.
Lola Lessard
Dr Lola Lessard completed her neurology residency training at the Neuromuscular Center of Ottawa from 2024-2025 while visiting from Hospices Civils de Lyon, France.
Matthew MacDonald
Matthew joined the team in June 2021 as a Research Coordinator, working on several neuromuscular disease clinical trials for Dr. Lochmüller.
Miriam Maisababi
Miriam worked as a Research Assistant with the Lochmüller clinical research team at CHEO Research Institute from 2022-2023.
Rosa Ramos
Rosa joined the Lochmüller Lab in 2019 to contribute to the group’s clinical research activities.
Sydney Zakutney
Sydney was a research assistant with the Lochmüller Lab’s clinical research team from 2023-2025.
Networking
James Davis
James Davis was the Communications Coordinator for the Neuromuscular Disease Network for Canada (NMD4C) led by Dr. Lochmüller from 2020-2025.