Maribel Salas

Committee Chair, MD, DSc, MSc, FACP, former NASoP President

Executive Medical Director, Leading the Therapeutic Area of Specialty Medicine & Epidemiology at CSPV Department, Daiichi Sankyo Inc.

President of the North America Society of Pharmacovigilance, Chapter of ISOP.

Holds degrees in Medicine, Internal Medicine, Outcomes Research, Epidemiology, Clinical Epidemiology and Pharmacoepidemiology.
Adjunct Scholar at the CCEB/CPeRT, U. of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA and Rutgers University.
Active member at the International Society of Pharmacoepidemiology (ISPE) and ISoP. Active member of ISPE GDC including the RIGs at Brazil, Latin American and African regions.
Experience in academia (U. of Alabama at Birmingham) and industry (Clinical Safety and PV at  AZ, Pfizer, Merck and DSI).
Published >100 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals and has >800 citations in the scientific literature.

Omar Aimer

Local Organizing Committee Chair, PharmD PhD, NASoP President

Safety Officer, and is based in Montreal, Canada. He is an Executive Committee member and Treasurer of the International Society of Pharmacovigilance (ISoP), Leader of the Medical Device Safety – Special Interest Group (SIG) and serves on the NASoP Executive Committee as the Coordinator of Membership.

He previously held leadership roles in pharmaceutical companies in Europe and Canada. He holds a Degree in Pharmacy and PhD in Pharmacology from Algiers University, Algeria and a Master in Pharmacovigilance and Drug Safety from Paris Descartes University, France.

Omar has presented in multiple scientific forums with interest in new technologies and the improvement of pharmacovigilance around the world.

Bruce Carleton

University of British Columbia UBC

Professor  and Chair of the Division of Translational Therapeutics in the Department of Pediatrics, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia (UBC) and founder of the MedSafe Clinics at British Columbia Children’s and St. Paul’s Hospitals in Vancouver, Canada. He is also a Senior Clinician Scientist at the BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute and runs the Canadian Pharmacogenomics Network for Drug Safety, a Canadian and international pharmacovigilance network devoted to the study of the biological mechanisms of serious adverse drug reactions and vaccine adverse events. He holds additional faculty appointments at UBC in the Department of Medical Genetics, School of Population and Public Health, Centre for Health Services and Policy Research and the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences.  He is also an adjunct professor at the School of Health Information Science at University of Victoria. 

Dr. Carleton also serves the US Government as a Special Government Employee to advise the Advisory Committee for Pharmaceuticals and Clinical Pharmacology of the FDA.   He is a fellow of the American College of Clinical Pharmacology and the International Society of Pharmacoepidemiology.

Katarina Ilic

MD MSc PhD MPH, ISoP Scientific Board, Celldex Therapeutics Executive Medical Director, USA

Katarina is an MD with a Master of Science and PhD in pharmacology from the University of Belgrade, Serbia, and a Master of Public Health in Epidemiology and Clinical Research from Tulane University, New Orleans, USA. Dr. Ilic completed a fellowship in Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Belgrade and Tulane University, as well as a fellowship in Drug Research and Development in the USA.   She was a Professor at the Department of Pharmacology at the School of Pharmacy, University of Belgrade, and an expert appointed by the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Serbia. Katarina served as a consultant and KOL for US and EU companies, co-authored several textbooks and was an editor of Women’s Health book. In addition, Dr. Ilic is a recipient of several awards and prestigious fellowships including the Hubert Humphrey Fellowship in Clinical Research and Epidemiology.

In the last 10 years, Katarina worked at several pharmaceutical companies including Shire and Takeda in Drug Safety, Clinical Pharmacology, and Clinical Development as a Senior/ Executive Medical Director.  Dr. Ilic is the ISoP fellow (FISoP) and the member of the ISoP Scientific Committee, as well as an active member of the American Society of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (ASCPT). Katarina Ilic is a Topic Editor of Clinical Therapeutics.

Li Zhang

Beijing University, MD, PhD, FISoP

Professor Zhang had worked in field of pharmacovigilance and risk management for 15 years at National Medical Product Administration in China. Now she works as a physician of Integrated Medicine and is engaged in clinical research in Dongfang Hospital, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine. She has been involved in drug clinical evaluation and safety monitoring for over two decades.

Li is ISoP Advisory Board member (2019-2025). She is Expert of the WHO Uppsala Monitoring Center signal review panel; Secretary General of Pharmacovigilance Research Committee, China Society for Drug Regulation; Vice Chairman of Data Safety and Monitoring Board of World Federation of Chinese Medicine Societies; Vice Chairman of Traditional Chinese Medicine Working Committee and Board member of Diabetes Committee, Beijing Association of Chinese Medicine. She is a member of the editorial board for Drug Safety, Chinese Journal of Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Evaluation Research. She has published more than 90 articles in peer-reviewed national and international scientific journals, while compiled or participated compiled 28 books, monographs and chapters as chief editor and associate editor.

Monica Muñoz

US FDA, PharmD, PhD

CAPT Monica Muñoz is the Director of the Division of Pharmacovigilance-I within US FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. Since joining FDA in 2010, she has served as a safety reviewer, managed review teams, and provided oversight for pharmacovigilance initiatives. Her research interests have centered on better understanding postmarketing adverse event data, signal identification methodologies, and leveraging data science tools for surveillance.

CAPT Muñoz also serves as a pharmacy officer in the US Public Health Service and has deployed for various missions, including in response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa and most recently for COVID-19.

Niklas Norén

Uppsala Monitoring Centre

Niklas Norén is Chief Science Officer at the Uppsala Monitoring Centre, the WHO Collaborating Centre for International Drug Monitoring, and a member of its executive management team since 2009. He has published extensively on statistical pattern discovery in observational medical data, primarily adverse event reports and electronic medical records. His research has resulted in scientific papers on duplicate detection and subgroup discovery that have been internationally awarded.

He is a member of the editorial board for Drug Safety, and he has led several international collaborative projects in pharmacovigilance including the signal detection work-package in IMI PROTECT; the work-packages on detecting substandard medicines and drug dependence in Monitoring Medicines; and the social media analytics work-package in IMI WEB-RADR. He is a member of the CIOMS XIV working group on Artificial Intelligence in Pharmacovigilance. Niklas holds a PhD in Mathematical Statistics from Stockholm University in 2007 and a MSc in Engineering Physics from Chalmers University of Technology in 2002.

Rania Mouchantaf

PhD, Health Canada

Dr. Rania Mouchantaf has over 20 years of academic, industry and regulatory experience and, is currently the A/Executive Director at the Marketed Health Products Directorate at Health Canada.  Before entering the public service, she worked in the private sector. However, her interest in drug safety and public health led her to join the federal government at Health Canada in 2006 where she has had the opportunity to take on various challenges and assume different roles in assessment, management and strategic policy development from both a pre and post market perspective in the area of safety, efficacy and quality throughout the drug lifecycle. In addition, Dr. Mouchantaf expanded her public health portfolio by having worked at the Public Health Agency of Canada where her team was responsible for developing evidence-based information that informed on policies related to the COVID-19 border travel testing program.

Her education includes a doctoral degree in Pharmacology and Therapeutics from McGill University, Canada, and a post-doctoral fellowship in the area of oncology and breast cancer research. Her experience also includes a past academic appointment as Associate Professor at the faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Montreal, Canada.

Robert Platt

PhD, McGill University

Robert Platt is Professor in the departments of Pediatrics and of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Occupational Health (EBOH) at McGill University. He is a Senior Investigator at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre and the Lady Davis Institute of the Jewish General Hospital, and Investigator at the McGill Pharmacoepidemiology Research Unit, and holds the Albert Boehringer I endowed chair in Pharmacoepidemiology.

Prof. Platt is the Principal Investigator of the Canadian Network for Observational Drug Effect Studies (CNODES). His research focuses on improving methods for the study of medications using administrative data, with an emphasis on methods for causal inference and a substantive focus on medications in pregnancy. Prof. Platt is an editor-in-chief of Statistics in Medicine, an editor of the American Journal of Epidemiology, and an associate editor of  Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety. He has published over 400 articles, one book and several book chapters on biostatistics and epidemiology. Prof. Platt is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and of the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology.

Tarek Hammad

Takeda, MD, PhD, MSc, MS, FISPE

Dr. Tarek Hammad, Vice President & Head of Medical Safety for Marketed Products at Takeda Pharmaceuticals, is a renowned expert in drug safety, benefit-risk assessment, and pharmacoepidemiology. With extensive experience at major pharmaceutical companies like Sanofi and Merck, as well as a distinguished 13-year career at the US FDA, he has received numerous awards for his contributions.

Dr. Hammad is a sought-after speaker, actively involved in industry initiatives and held several academic appointments. He has authored over 80 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and letters to the editor, offering valuable insights in the field. Learn more at www.DrTarekHammad.com.

Ushma Mehta

University Cape Town, Pharm.D, DrPh

Associate Professor Ushma Mehta is the Deputy Director of  the Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Research (CIDER) at the School of Public Health at the University of Cape Town. Her career in pharmacovigilance spans over 27 years including regulatory, clinical and public health pharmacovigilance programmes for over 20 years. She has served as a Board member of the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority.

She is a member of the WHO Advisory Committee for the Safety of Medicinal Products (ACSoMP). Her work has included supporting WHO in developing national regulatory and surveillance programmes for the safety of vaccines, antimalarials, antiretrovirals and TB drugs. She currently is the Principal Investigator of the UBOMI BUHLE project, a pregnancy exposure registry in South Africa and is involved in a variety of pharmacovigilance research projects.