INSPIRE at the WE-SPARK Annual Health Conference!

Rowena Hill-Ernesto

Published 3/24/2025

Team photo of INSPIRE team at WE-SPARK Annual Health Conference 2025

Huge congratulations to everyone who participated in the WE-SPARK Annual Health Conference 2025 on Saturday!

The WE-SPARK Annual Health Conference 2025 kicked off in style this last Saturday March 22nd, and we were so proud to see so many of our INSPIRE team members and trainees at the event. The program kicked off with plenary speakers Dr. Zayna Khayat, Dr. Paul Kurdyak, and Dr. Rama Khokha, as well as hearing from our very own Dr. Kendall Soucie about lived experience and research.

After a quick break we got to hear all the Rapid-Fire presentations, including INSPIRE’s Maria Badalova who discussed her participation in the saliva testing project for detecting Covid-19. 

Well done Maria!

Maria Badalova presenting her work during the Rapid Fire presentations

Then we had the opportunity to view posters and hear from researchers about their work. This is where we found INSPIRE’s Cassidy Kost, Maria Badalova, Ethan Harrop, Jesse Marangoni, Isidora Sekaric, Ryland Corchis-Scott, Mackenzie Beach, Yemurayi Hungwe, and Jackie Fong. 

Amazing work by everyone!

Isidora Sekaric and her poster.
Jesse Marangoni and Domenic Varacalli with their poster.
Mackenzie Beach presenting her poster.
Maria Badalova and Jackie Fong presenting their poster.
Ethan Harrop and one of two of his posters.
Ryland Corchis-Scott and his poster.
Yemurayi Hungwe presenting her poster.
Cassidy Kost presenting her poster.

We then had an INSPIRE concurrent session, where we heard some fascinating presentations by Bridgette Amoako, Kiana Lesan Pezeshki and Sepinood Haghighi, Dr. Ana Podadera, and Shahrzad Zahedifar. This was a great opportunity to hear about some of the amazing projects that have been going on across the University of Windsor, University of Waterloo, and University of Guelph. 

Huge well done to all of our presenters!

Kiana Lesan Pezeshki and Sepinood Haghighi presenting during the concurrent session.
Dr. Ana Podadera presenting during the concurrent session.
Shahrzad Zahedifar presenting her work during the concurrent session.
INSPIRE speakers from the concurrent session.

After this we had another opportunity to hear from more researchers across the breadth of the WE-SPARK partners and affiliations, and make meaningful connections with those outside of our immediate groups. This was followed by a great discussion panel talking about “Engaging People with Lived-Experience in Research Projects”, where we heard from Dr. Kendall Soucie, alongside Dr. Caroline Hamm, Dr. Kemi S Anazodo, Dr. Dajan O’Donnell, and Sara Williams.

Finally the event ended with award presentations, where there were a whopping 15 awards given out! One of which to Maria Badalova for her poster presentation – congratulations to all award winners!

Maria Badalova receiving a poster award.

Overall the WE-SPARK Annual Health Conference was a great success, and we were so pleased to see so many of our team members and trainees there representing the amazing work that INSPIRE does. 

You should all be very proud!

You can find our LinkedIn post about the conference here: LinkedIn  Post

And if you want to hear more and read the abstracts of the work that was being presented, you can find that here: WE-SPARK Abstract Program

WE-SPARK appreciates your feedback – if you attended the conference please remember to complete the Post Conference Survey.

If you have any photos from the conference, please share them with us!