When Dr. Susanna Mak stepped into her new role in July 2024 as Deputy Director of Clinical Research for Sinai Health, she knew she was starting out with skilled, innovative researchers making a big impact both in Canada and globally. But Dr. Mak saw an opportunity that went beyond the excellence of Sinai Health’s researchers and their separate initiatives.
“Our researchers need the appropriate oversight and leadership to help break down some of the barriers that face all researchers,” says Dr. Mak. “We‘ve made great research achievements, but in large part they’ve been made independently, without knowing enough about what other researchers are doing. That translates into missing a whole bunch of opportunities.”
To that end, Dr. Mak’s priority has been, and will continue to be, building bridges between siloed research efforts, with the goal of one day ensuring there are no silos at all.
“I want to interconnect researchers, build a community of research, share resources wherever possible and grow research in alignment with what we’re all doing,” she says.
In addition to being a Senior Clinician Scientist at Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute (LTRI), Dr. Mak is the Director of the Anna Prosserman Heart Function Clinic and of the Harold and Esther Mecklinger and the Posluns Family Cardiac Catheterization Research Laboratory – both at Mount Sinai Hospital. She also served as the first-ever female Department Division Director of Cardiology at the University of Toronto.
Dr. Anne-Claude Gingras, Director of LTRI and Vice-President of Research for Sinai Health, says she appointed Dr. Mak to her new position because she clearly has the right experience and the right approach..
“She doesn‘t order people to do things but instead works with them through consultation. We both share the same commitment to bringing people together, getting rid of silos and ensuring that researchers are getting the support they need — from us and from other researchers — so that Sinai Health continues to be the research powerhouse that it is.”
Indeed, Dr. Mak won’t be letting her new responsibilities interfere with her own research. She has recently launched a clinical research program that seeks to provide state-of-the-art diagnostics for syndromes of breathlessness related to aging. The program, called BREATH (Breathlessness Revealed using Exercise to Assess The Hemodynamic response), received funding from the Ontario Research Fund, which was matched by Sinai Health Foundation.
Dr. Mak says that her work will also benefit from the research of others in different areas — which is precisely the environment she’s seeking to create in her new role.
“I would like to think that in the coming years every researcher at Sinai Health will have a simple path to getting things done. We will have streamlined our ability to collaborate with each other and have ongoing multidivisional and multipillar research projects. That‘s how I‘ll know that we’ve been successful.”