Our research team

Yan Kestens, CIHR Applied Public Health Chair in Urban Interventions and Population Health and associate professor at Ecole 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 influences 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!

Meghan Winters is a Principal Investigator on INTERACT, and a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Scholar. Her research focuses on ways that cities and their infrastructure can play a role in promoting healthy and safe transportation, for people of all ages and abilities. She is happiest when working in close collaboration with cities and stakeholders to conduct research and create tools that address real-world challenges. Meghan is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University and a core investigator at the Centre for Hip Health and Mobility. Meghan has a PhD from the School of Population and Public Health at UBC. Out of the office, Meghan aims to spend the maximum time outside, biking, camping, picnicking and exploring with her family in tow.

Computer science – Machine learning – Tool development

Urban planning – Consultation process – Mixed methods

Mixed Methods – Mental Health – Psychology of Tech and Privacy

Spatial Cognition – GIScience – Health Geography

Sex and Gender Champion

Active aging – Qualitative Methods – Knowledge Translation

Methods – Cancer prevention – Physical Activity

Active aging – Implementation – Mobility

Intervention research – Maternal and Child Health – Neighbourhoods and Health

Active Transportation – Cycling Infrastructure – Spatial Analysis

Collaborator

Spatio-temporal Analysis – GISscience – Health Geography

Collaborator

Physical Activity – Health Equity – Built Environment

Equity Champion

Health Equity – Social Epidemiology – Health Geography

Collaborator

Qualitative methods – Knowledge translation – Active aging

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

Caislin generates necessary knowledge on how policies impact our social and built environments and influence health inequities, Her work supports action towards policy solutions that prioritize equity and ensure healthy communities for all.

Social epidemiology, health equity, knowledge translation

With a background in chemistry and medicine, Nicolas is interested in the relationship between modes of transportation and physical activity, with the goal of promoting healthy urban environments.

Transportation, physical activity, population health 

Luana is a Data Science Master’s student, interested in movement modelling which extracts meaningful behaviour information from location data, like GPS points, for movement analysis.

Movement behaviour, data mining, data analytics.

Passionate about the health of people and active living, Jonathan is pursuing a master’s degree to apply his knowledge and ability to help individuals at the population level. 

Population physical activity, urban form interventions, non-communicable disease prevention

 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

Avipsa uses Machine Learning to understand urban planning from a data-driven perspective, tackling travel mode detection from GPS and accelerometer data from multiple devices.

Travel mode detection, wearables, machine learning 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Postdoctoral Fellow

MSc Kinesiology

Masters in Geography

Master of Community and Regional Planning University of British Columbia