Members

Roger Zemek, MD, is a Pediatric Emergency Physician practicing at the Children’s Hospital of Ontario (CHEO) and a Senior Scientist in the CHEO Research Institute in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. He is a Full Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine and holds a Tier-1 Clinical Research Chair in Pediatric Concussion at the University of Ottawa.

He completed his undergraduate studies in Applied Mathematics at Yale University, and his medical school and pediatric residency at Columbia University in New York City. He moved to Canada for his Pediatric Emergency Medicine fellowship training at McGill.

Dr. Zemek plays an active role in supporting national and international pediatric and concussion research organizations through a number of leadership positions, including Past-Chair of the Pediatric Emergency Research Canada (PERC) network, Executive committee of the Canadian Concussion Network (CCN), and a member of international committees for concussion such as International Traumatic Brain Injury Research and the North American Brain Injury Society board of directors.

Dr. Zemek’s national research program on pediatric concussion includes leading the largest pediatric concussion study to-date examining the predictors for Persistent Post-Concussion Symptoms in children (5P study). He also has led studies to optimize return to physical activity (PedCARE), return to school, and screentime. He leads the international Living Guideline for Pediatric Concussion that provides up-to-date best available evidence recommendations for health care professionals providing care for pediatric patients with a suspected concussion and information for patients, families, teachers and coaches.

Dr. Zemek is leading TRANSCENDENT – Transforming Research by Assessing Neuroinformatics across the Spectrum of Concussion by Embedding iNterdisciplinary Data collection to Enable Novel Treatments, a partnership between the CHEO Research Institute, the Ontario Brain Institute, 360 Concussion Care and a network of researchers across Canada and the United States. The principal goal of the TRANSCENDENT integrated discovery program is to identify markers that can be used to track concussion recovery across the spectrum of injury and use new and emerging technology to improve the diagnosis and advance the management of patients with concussion.