Primary Research Team
The Primary Research Team is based at the Offord Centre for Child Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
Drs. Georgiades and Boyle have compiled a team of experts in child and youth mental health, school climate and knowledge translation.
Dr. Georgiades is Principal Investigator of the School Mental Health Surveys and Co-Principal Investigator of the 2014 OCHS. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences at McMaster University and a Core Member of the Offord Centre for Child Studies. Dr. Georgiades research interests focus on quantifying the relative impact of ecological contexts on developmental outcomes, disaggregating the influences of socio-economic characteristics and modeling the extent to which ecological contexts may influence immigrant and non-immigrant children differently. More information about Dr. Georgiades can be found here.Dr. Kathy Georgiades
Dr. Michael Boyle
Dr. Boyle is the Principal Investigator on the 2014 OCHS and a Co-Principal Investigator for the related 2014 School Mental Health Study (SMHS). He is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences at McMaster University, Director of the Offord Centre for Child Studies and the Canada Research Chair in the Social Determinants of Child Health. Dr. Boyle’s research interests focus on the determinants of child health, particularly the relationship between neighbourhood, family and individual-level characteristics, the classification and measurement of childhood psychopathology, research study design and statistical analysis. More information about Dr. Boyle can be found here.
Soyeon Kim is a post-doctoral fellow with the Offord Centre for Child Studies working with Drs. Kathy Georgiades and Michael Boyle. She received her PhD in June 2015 in Developmental Psychology and Education from the University of Toronto. Her dissertation research examined the perceptual and cognitive mechanisms underlying ADHD symptoms. Before her PhD, Soyeon was trained and worked as a child clinical psychologist. Now she intends to integrate contextual influences on mental health such as effects of family, schools, and neighbourhood. She is especially interested in quantifying the impact of cyber-bullying victimization on mental health and testing for the moderating influence of sex.Soyeon Kim
Irene Vitoroulis is a post-doctoral fellow at the Offord Centre for Child Studies with Dr. Kathy Georgiades and Dr. Michael Boyle. She completed her Ph.D. in Psychology with Dr. Tracy Vaillancourt at the University of Ottawa. Her doctoral research focused on ethnic group differences in school bullying and peer victimization by (a) comparing the prevalence of bullying perpetration and victimization between ethnic majority and minority students based on meta-analytic reviews and (b) examining the association between school ethnic composition and bullying prevalence among Canadian and non-Canadian youth. Irene’s current work focuses on immigrant youths’ mental health associated with pre- and post-migratory stressors, family psychopathology and school influences including victimization, discrimination and school climate.Irene Vitoroulis
Past Team Members:
Melissa Kimber was a PhD Candidate in the Health Research Methodology Program under the supervision of Dr. Kathy Georgiades. She successfully defended her thesis in August of 2015, and accepted a post-doctoral fellowhip with Dr. Harriet MacMillan at the Offord Centre for Child Studies. Melissa’s research focuses on the social and psychological wellbeing of 1st and 2nd generation immigrant youth living in Canada and the United States and implementation science. Melissa was the 2014 OCHS School Mental Health Study Research Coordinator as well as a co-investigator. She also supported the 2014 OCHS team. Melissa Kimber
Laura Duncan

Laura Duncan is the 2014 OCHS Research Coordinator. She completed an M.A. in Sociology at McMaster University and worked as an Analyst for Statistics Canada before joining the Offord Centre for Child Studies. Laura has extensive experience completing secondary data analyses with large scale datasets.
Anna Kata

Anna Kata is a full-time Research Coordinator at the Offord Centre for Child Studies. She has previously worked on two other research studies at the Offord Centre, one examining peer provocation and the other testing measurement equivalency. Her background is in psychology and anthropology, with her graduate work examining the anti-vaccination movement. She recently completed her MPH degree.