Our research team

Daniel Fuller is a Principal Investigator on the INTERACT team and Canada Research Chair in Population Physical Activity in the School of Human Kinetics and Recreation at Memorial University. His research is focused on using wearable technologies to study physical activity, transportation interventions, and equity in urban spaces. Dan has an MSc in Kinesiology from the University of Saskatchewan, a PhD in Public Health from Université de Montréal. Dan is the Neighbourhood Factors Team co-lead of the Canadian Urban Environmental Health (CANUE) Research Consortium. He spends free time chasing his two rambunctious kids, and relives his youth playing recreational basketball on Mondays and Wednesdays.

Yan Kestens, Professor at École de Santé Publique de l’Université de Montréal is a Principal Investigator on INTERACT. His research focuses on improving our understanding of how urban changes influence population health, considering converging objectives of sustainability, improved quality of life and reduced health inequalities. Yan develops new tools to collect and analyse spatial data and processes, including wearable sensors, and map-based online questionnaires. Offline, Yan turns to his other projects involving brewing, french sausage, and kids!

Spatial Cognition – GIScience – Health Geography

Mixed Methods – Mental Health – Psychology of Tech and Privacy

Land Use and Transportation – Perceptions of Transit Users – GIScience

Urban planning – Consultation process – Mixed methods

Mobility Justice, Transportation Planning, Active Transportation

Active aging – Implementation – Mobility

Active Transportation – Cycling Infrastructure – Spatial Analysis

Sex and Gender Champion

Active aging – Qualitative Methods – Knowledge Translation

Equity Champion

Health Equity – Social Epidemiology – Health Geography

Governance, Resilience, Climate readiness 

Mobility – Active Transportation – Transit Planning

Planning policy – Transportation – Urban Design

Methods – Cancer prevention – Physical Activity

Meridith is a knowledge translation strategist and PhD candidate whose research aims to advance how cities measure and understand the impact of urban change on social connectedness, health, and equity.

Built environment, social connectedness, knowledge translation

Julie is pursuing her PhD in Public Health, informed by her previous work as a landscape architect. She is interested in how walkable neighbouroods relate to social connections. 

 Using data analytics, Kole is interested in how various changes to a built environment may affect an individual’s physical activity patterns, as well as how similar one’s physical activity patterns are to others in the same area.

Data analytics, physical activity, and accelerometry

Zoé brings together key people, resources, and data to advance and promote our research. She’s worked in political communications and research, before becoming a community organizer, where she focused on urban revitalization and ageing. She holds a Master’s of Urban Planning from McGill University. Zoé organizes her free time around food, transit, and friends.

Meridith is a knowledge translation and communications strategist with a passion for mobilizing evidence and people around bold solutions to public health challenges. Meridith has spent the past ten years leading knowledge translation and evaluation strategies for health organizations aspiring for greater reach and impact. Her work has spanned multiple disciplines and settings, from government agencies in Canada to community organizations in Brazil and Botswana. Meridith spends most weekends playing in the mountains around Vancouver and park-hopping with her sushi-loving kids and mischievous yellow lab Kona.

Karen Laberee is the Project Coordinator in Victoria. She is also the Executive Director of BikeMaps.org. Karen has enjoyed drawing upon her experience in developing creative approaches for promoting BikeMaps.org to recruit participants in Victoria for Team Interact. When she’s not talking about biking, Karen can be found running the spectacular trails that are found just outside of Victoria.

Qualitative Research Manager

Qualitative methods – Knowledge translation – Active aging

Dr. Jefferson Smith is a semi-retired computer scientist and entrepreneur who couldn’t decide what he wanted to be when he grew up: a technology specialist helping socially relevant research programs deal with the complexity of software and data landscapes, or a science-fiction and fantasy author creating darkly humorous adventure landscapes in a style he calls ‘grindark.’ But then he realized that both jobs were too much fun to choose just one. So these days, Jeff spends half his week designing and implementing INTERACT’s data management pipeline, and the other half chasing imaginary people through the corridors of his mind.

Benoit is principally responsible for managing the spatial data collected as part of INTERACT. The rest of the time, he contributes to the work of the team by developing innovative spatial analysis techniques and geographic information systems related to population health. He also implements solutions for research and clinical interventions using multi-sensors combining GPS and accelerometers. Firmly claiming a generalist profile, he holds a telecommunications engineering degree (France) and a master’s degree in geomatics (Université Laval, Québec).  From time to time, satiated with bits and bytes, he uproots himself to southern latitudes.

Postdoctoral Fellow

MSc Kinesiology

Masters in Geography

Master of Community and Regional Planning University of British Columbia

Well-being, mental health, health promotion

Travel mode detection, wearables, machine learning 

 Active transport – Methods – Geo-social determinants of health

Transportation, physical activity, population health 

Movement behaviour, data mining, data analytics.