Directors
Dr. Elizabeth Wilcox, Director
Dr. Elizabeth Wilcox completed her MD (‘03) at the University of Calgary, followed by residencies and a critical care fellowship at the University of Toronto. She then moved to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the U.K., where she obtained a master of public health (‘11) before returning to Toronto for her PhD (‘19).
Throughout this period she spent time as an attending physician at Toronto’s University Health Network and a faculty member at the University of Toronto, and as an affiliated scientist at Krembil Brain Institute. She joined the University of Alberta in 2023, where she is an associate professor in the Department of Critical Care Medicine. She also shares her clinical time between the general systems and neuroscience intensive care units at the University of Alberta Hospital and is the medical director of the neurosciences ICU and high intensity unit.
Dr. Wilcox has a special research interest in long-term outcomes after critical illness with a specific focus on cognition and sleep. Her COGnitive outcomes and WELLness in survivors of critical illness (COGWELL) study was the first multisite, comprehensive project to link sleep and circadian function, rhythmic cortical electrophysiological activity and long-term cognitive impairment. She has also served as a co-investigator of major international studies.
Dr. Anna Taylor, deputy Director (BIOMEDICAL)
Dr. Anna Taylor completed her PhD (’11) at McGill University followed by postdoctoral training at the University of California, Los Angeles. She joined the University of Alberta in 2017, where she is associated professor in the Department of Pharmacology. She holds a Canada Research Chair in Pain and Addiction and the Alberta Cancer Foundation Chair in Palliative Care.
Dr. Taylor runs a biomedical research lab routed in discovery science and solving the problems of pain and addiction. Her research strives to understand how chronic pain changes brain circuits and whether these changes alter the effects of opioids. She explores strategies to improve opioid efficacy while minimizing addiction risk. Finally, she is developing novel therapies to treat pain without abuse liability. This research comes at a critical juncture when safe and effective chronic pain management is increasingly challenging amidst the opioid overdose epidemic.
Dr. Tejas Sankar, deputy Director (CLINICAL)
Dr. Tejas Sankar obtained his medical degree from McGill University in 2003, before moving west to complete his residency in Neurosurgery at the University of Alberta, becoming a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in 2010. During his residency training, he completed a 2-year research fellowship at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, developing expertise in the application of advanced imaging techniques to study the growth and progression of brain tumors. On completing his residency, he undertook a clinical fellowship in Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery and completed his PhD in neuroimaging at the University of Toronto, ultimately returning to Edmonton to begin his practice as a neurosurgeon-scientist.
Currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of Alberta, Dr. Sankar has a strong clinical interest in the neurosurgical management of patients with Parkinson’s Disease and other movement disorders using Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS), and he is the surgical lead for the DBS program. He also has a major interest in treating patients with Trigeminal Neuralgia and other forms of chronic pain using surgical intervention, while maintaining interests in neurooncology and radiosurgery.
Dr. Sankar currently serves as Divisional Research Director in Neurosurgery and is the Principal Investigator for the Functional Neurosurgery Research Laboratory at the University of Alberta. The lab currently focuses on the use of multimodal imaging and neurophysiological techniques in order to understand and predict treatment response across a wide range of neurosurgical illnesses, with specific emphasis on Parkinson's Disease and Trigeminal Neuralgia. The lab is supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Parkinson Canada, and several other funding sources. Dr. Sankar also serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences—Canada’s preeminent neuroscience publication—and is the first neurosurgeon to hold that role in its 50-year history. He also serves in several national leadership roles, including on the boards of the Canadian Neuromodulation Society and the Canadian Movement Disorders Society.