Â鶹AV

The School of Human Nutrition is excited to welcome four new Faculty members:

Dr. Anne-Sophie Brazeau (pictured top left), has been appointed as Assistant Professor and Program Director of Dietetic Education and Practice. She is a registered dietitian and member of the Ordre Professionnel des Diététistes du Québec. Dr Brazeau received her PhD in Human Nutrition from the Université de Montréal (2012), which was followed by her appointment as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Division of Clinical Epidemiology at Â鶹AV (2013-2017), competitively funded by the Heart and Stroke Foundation. She has received numerous awards including the CIHR Banting & Best Doctoral Scholarship. Recently, Dr Brazeau was awarded by l’Ordre professional des diététistes du Québec with the ‘Prix engagement – Lussier Dale Parizeau’.

As a young Clinician-Scientist, Dr Brazeau has over 20 publications. Her research program focuses on strategies to improve health behaviors of individuals with type 1 diabetes to optimize their control of the disease and its complications but also on prevention development of type 2 diabetes in an at risk population through health behaviors changes. Currently she is co-leading the VPN study, a virtual network of youth with type 1 diabetes. The objective of this network is to enhance social support in adolescent and young adults to improve their diabetes care. She is also co-leading the Sugar and Health study. This study is designed to explore the relationship between free-sugar consumption and later development of gestational diabetes, a temporary condition leading to greater risk of type 2 diabetes in the years following pregnancy.

Her research projects have been funded by numerous organizations such as the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, Diabetes Canada, and the Société Francophone du Diabète.

Dr. Stéphanie Chevalier (pictured top right), has been appointed as an Associate Professor. Dr Chevalier is a registered Dietitian and a member of OPDQ and obtained her BSc in Dietetics (1990) and both her MSc (1991) and PhD (1997) degrees in nutrition from the University of Montreal. In 1998, she joined the Â鶹AV Nutrition and Food Science Centre as a Postdoctoral Fellow. She was awarded Chercheur-boursier junior 1 and 2 awards from le Fonds de recherche du Québec- Santé 2007-2015. In 2013, she became the leader of the Nutrition Axis of the Quebec Research Network on Aging. She joined the School of Human Nutrition as an Associate Member in 2009 and now as Associate Professor in 2018.

Dr. Chevalier is an active member of the Canadian Nutrition Society and the American Society for Nutrition, organizing and chairing symposia. She contributes to grant and fellowship review panels (CIHR, FRQS, DFC, MUHC-RI) and has published 42 articles in excellent journals. Dr Chevalier’s area of expertise is protein metabolism and the role of dietary protein and amino acids in aging and disease. Her research involves metabolic studies using isotopic tracers to quantify metabolic fluxes during metabolic disorders including cancer cachexia, obesity and type 2 diabetes. Her work has been supported by the CIHR, FRQS, Dairy Farmers of Canada, the MUHC-Research Institute and the Department of Geriatric Medicine.

Alumna Dr. Treena Wasonti:io Delormier (pictured bottom left) is returning to the School as an Associate Professor of Indigenous Peoples’ Nutrition and Food Security. In addition, she is the incoming Associate Director of the Centre for Indigenous Peoples' Nutrition and Environment (CINE), and a member of the Â鶹AV Institute for Global Food Security. Dr. Delormier is a Professional Dietitian and holds Bachelor and Master degrees in nutrition from Â鶹AV, and a PhD in Public Health from l’Université de Montréal. She is Kanien’kehà:ka (Mohawk) from the Kahnawake (by the rapids) community, and has had a long-time involvement with the Kahnawake Schools Diabetes Prevention Project.

Her research interests include food, food security, nutrition and health, social perspectives of food choice, Indigenous research methodologies, qualitative methodologies, Indigenous Peoples’ food systems, and the prevention of diabetes and obesity. Dr. Delormier is doing research in collaboration with Indigenous communities in Canada and Hawaii. Her current projects aim to apply social perspectives and theories of food choice to better understand the lived experience of food insecurity at the family level and translate community understandings of health issues to guide actions to support healthy lifestyles at the community level.  She is also involved with research on the factors influencing implementation and impact of a successful diabetes prevention training program in First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities across Canada. 

Dr. Daiva Nielsen (pictured bottom right) has been appointed as an Assistant Professor of Nutritional Epidemiology.  Dr Nielsen completed her graduate work at the University of Toronto in the areas of nutrigenomics and personalized nutrition. She went on to conduct postdoctoral research in translation genomics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA, USA, where she was involved in some of the first clinical trials aimed at evaluating the medical, behavioural and economic outcomes of incorporating genomic sequencing into medical practice. Dr. Nielsen’s training background has provided her with skills in dietary assessment, behaviour modification, genomics and knowledge translation. Her research goals include utilizing genomic information to design tailored strategies for prevention of cardiometabolic diseases, and ensuring optimal knowledge translation to health professionals.