Every year CUCOH brings a diverse group of healthcare professionals to speak during our case challenges and panelist segments. Get to know a bit more about their background and how they are making an impact in the healthcare industry below:
Dr. Wiley Chung
Dr. Wiley Chung is a thoracic surgeon, educator, and systems designer who challenges the idea that better outcomes come from technical excellence alone. An Associate Professor of Surgery and Reznick Scholar in Health Professions Education at Queen’s University, his work centers on a harder question: what actually allows people, teams, and systems to perform well when the stakes are highest in the operating room.
He serves as Director of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Indigeneity, and Accessibility (EDIIA) in the MD Program, where he established the first MD Program EDIIA Committee in North America - embedding equity, accountability, and belonging into curriculum, admissions, mentorship, and wellness. As Director of Interprofessional Education, he is co-leading the implementation of a 20% shared interprofessional curriculum across medicine, nursing, and rehabilitation therapy, advancing Queen’s Health Sciences’ Radical Collaboration mandate and intentionally disrupting siloed training models that no longer serve modern healthcare.
Dr. Chung is the founder and Principal Investigator of the Chung Lab, a 70+ member multidisciplinary research team studying operating room team resiliency, psychological safety, interprofessional learning, and surgical quality improvement. His work spans educational scholarship and rigorous clinical investigation: he is the Principal Investigator of the DICE Trial, a randomized controlled trial comparing treatments for empyema, and leads the EndoFLIP Trial, examining how novel intraoperative technologies can improve short- and long-term outcomes in hiatal hernia surgery.
Holding a Master’s in Health Professions Education and currently completing a PhD in Health Quality at Queen’s and an MBA at the University of Oxford, Dr. Chung’s work is unified by a simple belief: sustainable excellence isn’t achieved by avoiding failure, but by intentionally designing systems that help people do more right. Dr. Chung was the keynote speaker at CUCOH in 2025, and he is excited to return for a panel discussion this year.
Dr. Danielle Macdonald
Dr. Danielle Macdonald is a relational educator and nurse scholar whose work is grounded in person-centredness and the belief that all learners are co-constructors of their experiences. Guided by the values of respect, inclusion, co-learning, and shared responsibility, she sees her role as a facilitator who creates structured yet flexible spaces where students learn with, from, and alongside one another.
Her program of research focuses on global experiences of birthing care, with particular attention to the perspectives of midwives, nurses, birthing people, and their families, as well as the dynamics of collaboration across these groups. She uses qualitative approaches and applies a gender lens to explore how historical, cultural, and social forces shape current practices and power relations in birthing care. She also has expertise in Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) systematic review methodology, particularly the meta-aggregation of qualitative data.
Across her work, the humanity of birth and the transformative potential of collaboration between nurses and midwives remain central, as she strives to reorient birthing care as a truly person-centred endeavour.
Dr. Louise Winn
Dr. Louise Winn is a distinguished professor and academic leader at Queen’s University with cross-appointments in the Department of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences, and the School of Environmental Studies. She currently serves as the Associate Dean of Life Sciences and Biochemistry within the Faculty of Health Sciences, where she contributes to interdisciplinary teaching, research, and program development across the life sciences and health domains.
Dr. Winn’s research focuses on the molecular mechanisms of xenobiotic-initiated developmental toxicity, exploring how pharmaceutical drugs and environmental chemicals can lead to oxidative stress and teratogenesis during embryonic development. Her work uses in vivo and cell-based models to investigate how these agents affect embryonic signalling pathways and DNA recombination processes, advancing understanding of developmental risk factors.
In addition to her research, Dr. Winn has played a leadership role in graduate education and interdisciplinary program innovation. She has overseen graduate administration, contributed to the creation of combined BScH/MSc pathways, and developed proposals for new interdisciplinary graduate programs, including in biomedical informatics and medical sciences.
Dr. Winn’s broad academic experience and commitment to student development make her a valuable voice on healthcare education and research, bringing both scientific insight and educational leadership to CUCOH.
