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| KEYNOTE SPEAKER |
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Travis Roy
Keynote Address: Overcoming the Challenges that Choose Us
From an early age, Travis found his passion in the sport of hockey. Travis dreamed of one day playing Division I college hockey, and even having his shot at the NHL and the Olympics. In the end, Travis chose to play for the defending national champion Boston University Terriers. On October 20, 1995, with his family and friends in the stands, he took to the ice for his first shift. Eleven seconds after the puck dropped, Travis found himself lying face down on the ice, unable to move or feel a thing. Within seconds he not only knew he was paralyzed, but that life as he knew it was over. The prognosis was that he would be a quadriplegic for the rest of his life.
In the 22 years since Travis’ accident he has overcome many challenges. Ten months after his accident Travis returned to Boston University, and four years later he graduated with a degree in Communications. He wrote the book, Eleven Seconds, A Story of Tragedy, Courage, and Triumph, and also founded the Travis Roy Foundation, which has raised over $5 million to improve the lives of spinal cord injury survivors and fund medical research. |
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| GUEST SPEAKERS |
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Andrew J. Davidson, MBBS, MD, FANZCA
Professor Davidson is a Senior Staff Anaesthetist at the Royal Children's Hospital, head of Anaesthesia Research at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute and Professor in Department of Paediatrics, University of Melbourne. Professor Andrew Davidson is also the Medical Director of the Melbourne Children's Trials Centre; a leading centre for paediatric trials worldwide. In this role, Professor Davidson is involved in facilitating all clinical research at The Royal Children's Hospital and the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute. Professor Davidson trained in anaesthesia in Melbourne, Nottingham, Rotterdam and Boston. He has received a Diploma of Biostatistics and Epidemiology and Doctorate of Medicine (MD) from the University of Melbourne.
He is currently editor-in-chief for the journal Paediatric Anaesthesia, and an Editor for Anesthesiology. He has been awarded eight National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) grants along with major research grants in Canada and the UK. Professor Davidson was the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA) Lennard Travers Professor in 2011. He is a member of the ANZCA Clinical Trials Group and chair of the Paediatric Trials Network Australia. |
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Peter C. Laussen, MBBS, FCICM
Dr. Peter Laussen is Chief of the Department of Critical Care Medicine at the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), Professor in Anaesthesia at the University of Toronto and holds the David and Stacey Cynamon Chair in Critical Care Medicine. He is a Senior Associate Scientists at the Research Institute and chair of the Medical Advisory Committee at SickKids.
Dr. Laussen has extensive experience with clinical research and educational activities in cardiac critical care and anaesthesia. Over the past decade he has focused on systems and human engineering applied to critical care, and the use of high and low frequency physiologic signals for predictive modelling in pediatric critical care; he is the lead developer of an innovative web-based data visualization platform called T3 (Tracking Trajectory Trigger tool). Dr Laussen is a co-founder in 2006 of the international “Risky Business” risk management, safety and quality conferences (www.risky-business.com) which brings together leaders in high-risk industries to discuss ways of improving the safety and quality of health care. |
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Patrick L. Purdon, PhD
Patrick L. Purdon, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School and an Associate Bioengineer at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is the Associate Director of the Neuroscience Statistics Research Laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital. He received his A.B. in Engineering Sciences, summa cum laude, from Harvard College in 1996, his M.S. in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 1998, and his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from MIT in 2005. He is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and is a recipient of the prestigious National Institutes of Health Directors New Innovator Award, the only researcher within the field of anesthesiology to have received this award.
Dr. Purdon has made fundamental contributions to the systems-level neural mechanisms of anesthesia, establishing in humans the relationship between anesthesia-induced changes in neuronal activity and electroencephalogram signatures that can be used to monitor general anesthesia and sedation. Dr. Purdon is also a leading researcher in biomedical engineering, and has made important advances in multimodal functional neuroimaging and biomedical signal processing. He has published more than 75 peer-reviewed papers on these topics. Dr. Purdon is translating his research insights to improve patient care in the operating room and intensive care unit, with 14 patents pending on technologies to monitor and control brain function during anesthesia and sedation, and numerous industry collaborations. Dr. Purdon is also deeply involved in clinical education, teaching anesthesiologists the basic science and clinical neurophysiology of general anesthesia and sedation, most recently through his online education website, AnesthesiaEEG.com. |
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