Former team members

Brenda Barasa

Brenda is responsible for coordinating Dr. Lochmüller’s Neuromuscular clinic at The Ottawa Hospital and occasionally at CHEO. 

Read More

James Davis

James Davis is the Communications Coordinator for the Neuromuscular Disease Network for Canada (NMD4C) led by Dr. Lochmüller. James holds a Masters Degree in Human Kinetics, and brings experience in network creation from his past work building and facilitating a sport safety network across Canada.

Read More
Marc-Olivier Deguise

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.

Read More
Liz Duff profile picture

Liz Duff

Liz is a clinical research coordinator at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute – Neuromuscular Department supporting multiple phase II-IV clinical studies on rare neuromuscular diseases with Dr. Lochmuller.

Read More
Astrid Eisenkolbl profile picture

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.

Read More

Isabelle Fisette-Paulhus

In October 2019, Isabelle started to work as a clinical evaluator for the various neuromuscular disease trials with Dr. Hanns Lochmüller at CHEO and The Ottawa Hospital. In February 2022, she joined The Ottawa Hospital as a clinical research coordinator.

Read More
Emily Freeman profile picture

Emily Freeman

Emily is a Post-Doctoral fellow in the Lochmüller Lab, where she hopes to use patient-derived stem cells to discover new drug therapies for myotonic dystrophy. Emily completed her PhD from the University of Ottawa under the supervision of Dr. Kyle Cowan at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario. Here she discovered a sex-dependant role for the small molecule channel Pannexin 1 in healthy skeletal muscle and found it to be a novel therapeutic target for Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

Read More

Abbie Gagnon

Abbie worked in the Lochmüller lab as a Research Technician in 2020.

Read More
Jian-Jun Jia

Jian-Jun Jia

Jian-Jun has worked in Ottawa for many years and worked in the Lochmüller lab as a research assistant.

Read More

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.

Read More
Lola Lessard

Lola Lessard

Dr Lola Lessard is currently finishing her residency training at the Neuromuscular Center of Ottawa. Lola is interested in fundamental, translational and clinical research on rare neuromuscular disorders, and has joined the Lochmüller Lab to contribute to the clinical research aspect of the research program. 

Read More

Matthew MacDonald

Matthew joined the team in June 2021 as a Research Coordinator, working on several neuromuscular disease clinical trials for Dr. Lochmüller.

Read More

Katelyn Maclellan

Katelyn is a summer student working with Dr. Lochmüller’s clinical trials team at the OHRI. She is currently pursuing a Post-Degree Diploma in Clinical Trials Management through Western University, completing her practicum with the Lochmüller Lab at the Civic Hospital this summer. 

Read More
Miriam Maisabibi's profile picture.

Miriam Maisababi

Miriam received a BSc Hons. in Biology (Concentration Physiology) in 2021 from Carleton University. Miriam Joined the Lochmuller clinical research team in November 2022 as a research assistant, having worked as a medical assistant at a family practice before joining the team.

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

Read More

Katerina Palacek

Katerina is a medical student at the University of Ottawa. She is working as a summer student in the Lochmüller Lab studying optogenetic zebrafish models for novel gene discovery in congenital myasthenic syndromes.

Read More

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.

Read More

Rosa Ramos

Rosa joined the Lochmüller Lab in 2019 to contribute to the group’s clinical research activities.

Read More
Rohan profile picture

Rohan Ray

Rohan Ray is a 4th year student in Translational and Molecular Medicine.

Read More
Anu Mary Varghese

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).

Read More
Research Assistant Sydney Zakutney

Sydney Zakutney

Sydney is a research assistant with the Lochmüller Lab’s clinical research team. Prior to this role she completed a summer internship at the Ottawa Neuromuscular Center in 2023.

Read More