Andre Kushniruk, PhD

Dr Kushniruk received his Bachelor's degrees in Biology and Psychology from Brock University, a Master's in Computer Science from McMaster University, and a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from McGill University, in the first phases of a tour de force of higher education in Canada. He then began his academic career as a research scientist in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, and was subsequently appointed Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Trent University in Ontario. He was recruited to York University in Ontario as Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, and served as faculty coordinator for the Information Technology Program there. In 2004 he moved to the University of Victoria, where he became Director of the School of Health Information Science, one of the most well known and comprehensive informatics programs in North America. He is currently a Professor at the School of Health Information Science at the University of Victoria and he also holds an adjunct appointment at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Dr Kushniruk's work has demonstrated how usability engineering methods can be applied widely in health informatics. He received a Paper award at MEDINFO 2004 for a paper on ëthe relationship of usability to medical errorí. Dr Kushniruk has developed novel approaches to application of qualitative analysis methods such as protocol and video analysis to support the assessment of user interactions with systems. These approaches have been adopted by a number of healthcare institutions, including both healthcare and research centers, nationally and internationally. Dr Kushniruk has been a tireless promoter of health informatics as a career in Canada, and has led the development of educational strategies, including promoting undergraduate health informatics education, web-based distance education up to the Master's level, and work on design of a new flexible PhD program to increase the number of trained professionals in the field. His election to the College recognizes these efforts that have both advanced the state of the art in technology evaluation, and broadened the educational opportunities in our field.