Scientists, Scientific Associates, and Clinician Associates

Research Focus

My research focuses on ways to reduce the replicability crisis in modern neuroscience. To do this, my group develops open science techniques and tools that can improve the replicability, reliability, accuracy and interpretability of data, particularly when collecting large, multi-institutional, multi-modality data sets in brain diseases (e.g., OPPNI, OuRS). Such tools are used to improve data quality assurance and control, data curation, and interpretation and analysis of big, multi-modal brain data sets using statistical and machine-learning techniques. Earlier in my career, I primarily focused on neuroimaging, but during the last decade, the focus has broadened to include techniques suitable for a wide range of human data types, e.g., clinical, behavioural, genetic, etc. In particular, I apply our techniques and tools to improve our understanding and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases and depression as an executive member and co-leader of several multi-institutional research programs including the Ontario Neurodegenerative Disease Research Initiative (ONDRI), the Toronto Dementia Research Alliance (TDRA), and the Canadian Biomarker Integration Network in Depression (CAN-BIND). I have also been nationally and internationally active in promoting standards for and sharing of neuroscience data and tools. I was a past chairman of an international Neuroinformatics Standards Committee that produced the neuroimaging NIfTI standard at the National Institutes of Health in the US; a senior investigator in the Canadian Open Neuroscience Platform (CONP); and a Canadian representative on the Council for Training, Science and Infrastructure at the Neuroscience standards organization, INCF, Sweden.