Meet Our YPC Team

Dr. Mackenzie McKeown is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow under the supervision of Dr. Colleen Dell at the University of Saskatchewan. Her research areas are rooted in public health, transportation safety, and occupational medicine. Her PhD research examined the health, cognition, worker productivity, driver perceptions, and driving performance of Canadian long-haul truck drivers as well as performing a national needs assessment of the truck stop work environment. Dr. McKeown’s current research investigates the prevalence, policies, and impacts of companion animals (e.g., pets; service animals; therapy animals) in long-haul trucking, including outcomes for driver health, safety, and wellbeing.

Dr. Robert Colonna is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. His research focuses on improving public health through road safety interventions, with a particular emphasis on cannabis use and impaired driving. His current work examines the determinants of cannabis-impaired driving among youth, evaluates brief digital interventions aimed at reducing cannabis use and impaired driving, and explores how gender influences experiences and outcomes within remedial education programs for impaired driving offenders. He also serves as a Board Member of the Canadian Association of Road Safety Professionals and Chair of its Young Professionals’ Committee. He is committed to developing evidence-based strategies that inform policy and improve public health.

Cameron Mohammadi is a first-year MASc student in Civil Engineering at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson). While completing his undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering with a focus on transportation at TMU, Cameron developed a strong passion for road safety and design. As a research assistant, he has been actively involved in road safety studies, particularly utilizing microsimulation software to assess the safety of vulnerable road users at intersections and interchanges through conflict-based analysis.

Dr. Maryam Hasanpour completed her PhD in Transportation Engineering at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University). Her research interest is traffic safety, focusing on crash-based and conflict-based analysis using new and innovative machine learning methods.

Abanoub is a Transportation Consultant with experience in private consulting practice. Abanoub is a graduate of the Civil Engineering program at McMaster University.  Abanoub has gained work experience in Canada and the USA working as a traffic engineer. Abanoub has worked on traffic impact studies, traffic capacity and operational analysis, trip distributions and assignments, corridor studies, and writing technical reports. Along with traffic engineering experience, Abanoub has also worked on final-year transit projects during his studies at McMaster University. The HSR (Hamilton Street Railway) City of Hamilton transit project aimed to develop systemic reconfiguration of HSR routes based on the integration of user preferences, service quality, operational quality, and system infrastructure. As a Transportation Consultant at Paradigm, Abanoub’s responsibilities include transportation impact studies, parking studies, and field investigations. Abanoub is proficient in AutoCAD, HCS, OTISS, Remix, Sidra, Synchro/Sim Traffic, Vistro, and Visum.

Jerome is currently pursuing a master’s degree in sustainable health at Université du Québec à Chicoutimi. His research interests are ergonomics, prevention and road safety. He aspires to mainly work with workers, particularly first responders. His research subject is related to the prevention of low back pain in police officers for which he has a published systematic literature review.

Valerie F. Pagnotta is a PhD Candidate specializing in Behavioural and Population Health at Brock University. Her research focuses on the role of built environment design features in preventing injuries and promoting active transportation among adolescents, with a particular emphasis on health equity. Valerie has worked as a data analyst for the Canadian Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study. She has published national and international epidemiological studies on social and contextual determinants of adolescent injury.

Robert Mansell is a Ph.D. candidate in Transportation engineering at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University). His research interest is road safety analysis with a focus on vulnerable road users. Other research interests include evaluating both average and heterogeneous road safety treatment effects and exploring the use of causal machine learning. 

Omid, with an M.Sc. in Transportation Engineering from the University of Calgary and a Bachelor’s in Civil Engineering from Sharif University of Technology (Iran), has five years of expertise in road safety engineering. As a Transportation Engineer at ISL Engineering and Land Services since 2018, he actively contributes to road safety review studies, including In-Service Road Safety Reviews and Network Screening. Specializing in transportation engineering, Omid implements safety improvement measures using his skills in traffic control devices, signage, and pavement markings. He collaborates effectively with multidisciplinary teams, local authorities, and stakeholders to address operational concerns and reduce accident rates. Passionate about prioritizing safety while maintaining efficiency, Omid is dedicated to creating secure and efficient transportation environments.

Omidreza Sadrmanesh completed his Master of Science in Kinesiology and Health Science at York University, specializing in epidemiology. He is currently a Research Assistant at Toronto Metropolitan University, working on traffic volume data. His goal is to apply data science techniques to address key limitations in denominator volume data within the road safety and injury research field.

Jeremy Colangelo is a biomechanical engineer who has worked as a Research Analyst for the Canadian Concussion Centre since 2024. Under the supervision of Dr. Charles Tator, his primary research focus is studying concussion with persisting concussion symptoms resulting from motor vehicle collisions. To better protect vehicle occupants against concussion, this research aims to elucidate risk factors and mechanisms causing concussion in motor vehicle collisions and identify deficiencies in vehicle safety systems with respect to concussion prevention. Jeremy has shared this work at various forums, including UHN’s Annual Brain Injury Conference and the Canadian Association of Road Safety Professionals’ annual conference. His other research interests include computer screen intolerance and eye tracking in patients with concussion. Jeremy previously received his Master of Biomedical Engineering degree from the University of Toronto and his Bachelor of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering degree from McMaster University. Outside of his research, he loves movies, books, road cycling, camping, and hiking.

Tahmina Sultana completed her Ph.D. from Carleton University, Ottawa in Transportation Engineering. Her research interests include highway geometric design, transportation planning and road safety. She published her research paper in the Journal of Advances in Transportation Studies (ATS) and World Electric Vehicle journal (WEVJ).

Teresa Akl is a Mobility Safety Engineer-in-Training with the City of Calgary and a Master of Science student in Civil Engineering at the University of Calgary, specializing in Transportation Engineering. Her research integrates transportation and sustainable engineering principles to advance road safety, with a particular focus on pedestrian safety. Her background in road safety is grounded in several years of non-profit and NGO work at both national and international levels.