Breaking News Experts
COVID-19
The following is a list of University of Toronto experts who can comment on a variety of issues related to COVID-19.
Alexandra Rahr
Bissell-Heyd Lecturer in American Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy
- Campus
Areas of Expertise
- COVID-19 – Pandemics as a natural disaster from a cultural perspective
- Natural disasters in American History
Office: n/a
Email: alexandra.rahr@utoronto.ca
Alison Thompson
Associate Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Professor of Public Health Services
Professor of Public Health Sciences, Dalla Lana School of Public Health
- Campus
- Faculty
- Department
- Centres
Areas of Expertise
- Emergency Preparedness and Global Health Security
- Ethics and pandemics
- Ethics and public health
- Ethics and vaccines
- Ethics of pandemics
- Prioritization of scare resources
- Professional ethics and pharmacy
- Public engagement
- Public health ethics
- Public understanding of risk and vaccination
- Social and ethics issues in health
Office: 416-978-8824
Mobile: 416-819-6581
Website
Email: a.thompson@utoronto.ca
Ambarish Chandra
Associate Professor of Economic Analysis and Policy
- Campus
- Faculty
- Department
Areas of Expertise
- Airlines
- Competition policy
- COVID-19 – U.S.-Canada border shutdown
- Cross-border travel and shopping
- Economics
- Gasoline and oil prices
- Oil and gas
- US-Canada border
- US-Canada exchange rate
Office: 416-978-7138
Email: ambarish.chandra@rotman.utoronto.ca
Anna Banerji
Director of Global and Indigenous Health, Faculty of Medicine
- Campus
- Faculty
Areas of Expertise
- COVID-19 – Helped with SARS as an infection disease specialist
- COVID-19 – state of emergency in the U.S.
- Health of Syrian refugees
- Health policy
- Indigenous health
- International health
- Inuit health
- Refugee health
- Tropical medicine / infectious disease
- Why is there a spike in refugees needing assistance
Office: 416-978-8319
Email: anna.banerji@utoronto.ca
Charles Pascal
Professor, Applied Psychology and Human Development, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
- Campus
- Faculty
Areas of Expertise
- COVID-19 – Online learning launching in Ontario
- COVID-19 – Will Ontario cancel the rest of the school year?
- Former deputy minister of education in Ontario
- Policy and education
- Seniority hiring rules
Office: 416-716-7245
Email: charles.pascal@utoronto.ca
Dan Breznitz
Co-Director, Innovation Policy Lab
Munk Chair, Innovation Studies
- Campus
- Faculty
- Department
Areas of Expertise
- COVID-19 – Role of innovation and impact on global production
- Economic policy
- Innovation policy
- Trade (Trans-Pacific Partnership)
Office: 416-946-0584
Email: dan.breznitz@utoronto.ca
David Soberman
Professor of Marketing
- Campus
- Faculty
Areas of Expertise
- Advertising
- Alliances
- Automotive
- Big data
- Brand management
- Business development
- Business models
- Business strategy
- Canada
- Competition policy
- Competitive strategy
- Consumer products
- Corporate social responsibility
- Corporate strategy
- COVID-19 – Pandemic profiteers
- Creative industries
- Data-driven decision making
- Distribution channels
- Entrepreneurial management
- Europe
- Food industry
- General management
- Global economic impact of COVID-19
- innovation
- Leadership
- Management innovation
- Market research
- Marketing
- Marketing strategy
- Media and entertainment
- Pricing
- Retail
- Sales
- Supply & demand
- Technological innovation
- Telecommunications
- The franchise that was Kobe Bryant
- The importance of ecommerce during pandemics
- United States
Office: 416-978-5445
Mobile: 416-420-4876
Languages: English and French
Website
Email: david.soberman@rotman.utoronto.ca
David White
Professor
- Campus
- Faculty
- Department
Areas of Expertise
- Community-based research
- COVID-19 – How hospitals are handling the demand
- Family medicine
- Health promotion
- Illness prevention
- Lessons learned from SARS
Office: 416-223-0555 (clinical)
Mobile: 416-998-7082
Email: david.white@utoronto.ca
David Zweig
Associate Professor of Organizational Behaviour and Human Resource Management
Chair, Department of Management
- Campus
- Faculty
- Department
Areas of Expertise
- Career management
- Collaboration and communications technologies in the workplace
- Electronic performance monitoring
- Employee motivation
- Fairness in the workplace
- Hiring
- Knowledge hiding in organizations
- Knowledge management
- Privacy
- Tips on how to be productive working from home
- Workplace issues
Office: 416-287-5613
Languages: Hebrew
Email: zweig@utsc.utoronto.ca
Dionne Aleman
Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering
Director, Medical Operations Research Lab
- Campus
- Faculty
- Department
Areas of Expertise
- COVID-19 – Spread of pandemics in urban areas
- Hospital planning
- How to predict who will need ventilators
- Mathematical models for cancer treatment planning (radiation therapy and focal ablation)
- Mathematical models for operating room scheduling
- Mathematical models for pandemic prediction and planning
- Medical decision-making
Office: 416-978-6780
Website
Email: aleman@mie.utoronto.ca
Harald Bathelt
Professor, Department of Political Science, Faculty of Arts and Science
Professor, Department of Geography and Planning, Faculty of Arts and Science
- Campus
- Faculty
- Department
- Centres
Areas of Expertise
- COVID-19 – Economic impact of travel restrictions & border closures
- Economic geography
- Economic globalization and international trade fairs
- Economic/Technology/Innovation policy
- German political economy
- Regional economic development and industry clusters
- Regional/National innovation and technological change
Office: 416-946-0183
Home: 416-597-2099
Languages: German
Website
Email: harald.bathelt@utoronto.ca
Isaac Bogoch
Associate Professor, Faculty of Medicine
- Campus
- Faculty
Areas of Expertise
- Anosmia
- Clinical
- COVID-19 – planking the curve
- Epidemiology
- Global health
- Infectious diseases
- Public health
- Tropical medicine
Office: 416-294-2773
Email: Isaac.bogoch@uhn.ca
James Scott
Professor
- Campus
- Faculty
Areas of Expertise
- Bacteria
- Bioaerosol sampling technology
- Bioaerosols and airborne diseases
- Biodeterioration and biodegradation
- Biological hazards in occupational and environmental hygiene
- Biosafety and biosecurity
- Bioterrorism and biosecurity
- DNA sequence-based studies of human and environmental microbiomes
- Environmental and medical mycology
- Environmental exposures and allergic disease
- Environmental microbiology
- Evolutionary biology and ecology of microfungi
- fungi; mushrooms; mold; yeasts
- Hand sanitizer vs. hand washing
- Housing and health
- Human microbiome
- indoor air quality
- Microbiology
- Molecular detection of bioaerosols
- Mosquitoes and mosquito-borne disease
- Plant disease
- Viruses
Office: 416-946-8778
Website
Email: james.scott@utoronto.ca
Janice Stein
Founding Director, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy
Belzberg Professor of Conflict Management, Department of Political Science
- Campus
- Faculty
- Department
Areas of Expertise
- Border closures
- Conflict management and resolution
- COVID-19 – International effort to flatten the curve
- Global order
- Iran
- Middle East
Office: 416-946-8908
Languages: French
Email: j.stein@utoronto.ca
Judith Taylor
Professor, Department of Sociology, Women and Gender Studies Institute, Faculty of Arts & Science
- Campus
- Faculty
Areas of Expertise
- Culture and feminism
- Increase in domestic abusive during pandemics
- Last two years of #MeToo globally
- What nations can learn from one another
- Women’s disproportionate care work
Office: email preferred
Email: judith.taylor@utoronto.ca
Kerry Bowman
Assistant Professor, Department of Family and Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine
Assistant Professor, Department of School of Environment, Faculty of Arts and Science
- Campus
- Faculty
- Department
- Centres
Areas of Expertise
- Cloning/de-extinction/artificial intelligence
- consumption of wild animals & diseases
- COVID-19 – pandemic and quarantine ethics
- Environmental/climate change ethics
- Ethics of quarantine
- Gene editing/gene drive
- Genomic/genetic ethics
- Medical assistance in dying
- Physician assisted in dying/end of life
- Reproductive ethics
- Shortcomings in global health monitoring
- Zoonosis
Office: 416-586-4800, ext.2163
Home: 416-532-4594
Website
Email: kerry.bowman@utoronto.ca
Lisa Kramer
Professor of Finance
- Campus
- Faculty
- Department
Areas of Expertise
- Asset management
- Behavioural economics
- Business ethics
- Capital markets
- Consumer behaviour
- Corporate social responsibility
- COVID-19 – Economic impact
- COVID-19 – Trickle effect of the lockdown
- Decision making
- Ethical investing
- Financial economics
- Financial investments
- Financial markets
- Mutual funds
- Non-profit sectors
- Passive investing
- Pharmaceuticals
- Portfolio management
- Psychology of investing
- Stock market
- Sustainability
Office: 416-978-2496, 905-569-4893
Mobile: 416-456-4008
Website
Email: lkramer@rotman.utoronto.ca
Lynette Ong
Associate Professor of Political Science
- Campus
- Faculty
- Department
- Centres
Areas of Expertise
- Authoritarian politics
- Canada-China relations
- Coronavirus outbreak impact on trade & international relations
- How COVID-19 will change Chinese culture and cuisine
- Human rights in China
- Political economy of China
- Politics and political economy in China
- Politics in Singapore and Malaysia
- Politics of China
- Protest and state repression in China
- Urbanization in China
Office: 416-978-6804
Languages: Mandarin, Chinese
Website
Email: lynette.ong@utoronto.ca
Mark Manger
Associate Professor of Political Economy and Global Affairs,
Director, Master of Global Affairs Program
- Campus
- Faculty
- Department
Areas of Expertise
- International monetary and financial policy
- Japan (economy and politics)
- Macroeconomic policy
- Political economy of Japan
- Trade agreements
- Trade and investment
- Uncharted territory of COVID-19 economic impact
Office: 416-946-8927
Mobile: 416-877-6236
Languages: German, Spanish, French, Japanese
Website
Email: mark.manger@utoronto.ca
Miriam Diamond
Professor, Department of Earth Sciences, Faculty of Arts and Science
Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry, Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering
- Campus
- Faculty
- Department
- Centres
Areas of Expertise
- Air and water pollution
- Cities
- Human exposure
- Impact of COVID-19 on climate change
- Indoor environment
- Toxic Chemicals
Office: 416-978-1586
Mobile: 416-573-2977
Website
Email: miriam.diamond@utoronto.ca
Natasha Crowcroft
Professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health
Professor, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, Faculty of Medicine
- Campus
- Faculty
- Department
Areas of Expertise
- COVID-19 – Geopolitical challenges
- Diphtheira
- Encephalitis
- Ethnicity and health
- Hepatitis A
- How vaccines are developed
- Immunization and vaccines
- Infectious disease epidemiology
- Meningococcal disease
- Pertussis
- Public health and preventive medicine
- Rabies
- Surveillance
- Tetanus
- Vaccination coverage
- Vaccination programmes
- Vaccine preventable diseases
Office: 647-260-7401
Mobile: 416-726-9746
Email: natasha.crowcroft@utoronto.ca
Paolo Granata
Visiting Professor, Faculty of Information, McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology
- Campus
- Faculty
- Centres
Areas of Expertise
- Harold Innis
- Italian politics
- Marshall McLuhan
- Media ecology
- Philosophy of technology
- Quarantines and lockdowns imposed by Italy's government
- The Toronto School of Communication
- Toronto Creative City
Office: 416 978 7026
Mobile: 647 550 6513
Website
Email: paolo.granata@utoronto.ca
Peter Donnelly
Professor
- Campus
- Faculty
Areas of Expertise
- Changing nature of abuse in sports
- Economic impact of Olympics postponement
- High risk sports
- Policy and politics
- Social issues in sports
- Sport
Office: 416-946-5071
Mobile: 905-617-6020
Email: peter.donnelly@utoronto.ca
Peter Loewen
Professor of Political Science,
Former Director, School of Public Policy and Governance,
Affiliate, Centre for the Study of the United States
- Campus
- Faculty
- Department
- Centres
Areas of Expertise
Office: 416-978-5120
Email: peter.loewen@utoronto.ca
Richard Powers
Associate Professor
National Academic Director, Directors Education Program and Governance Essentials Program
- Campus
- Faculty
Areas of Expertise
- Antitrust
- Argentina
- Automotive
- Brand management
- branding
- Brazil
- Business ethics
- Business law
- Business strategy
- Canada
- Chile
- China
- Compensation
- Competition policy
- Competitive strategy
- Consumer behaviour
- Consumer products
- Corporate corruption and fraud
- Corporate culture
- Corporate governance
- Corporate law
- Corporate social responsibility
- Corporate strategy
- COVID-19 – Closure of non-essential services
- COVID-19 – What a recession will mean for Canada
- Diversity
- Ethical investing
- Executive pay
- Family-owned businesses
- Governance
- How sports teams and franchises will be affected by COVID-19
- Management innovation
- Marketing strategy
- Media and entertainment
- Mergers and acquisitions
- Non-profit sectors
- Retail
- Social enterprises
- Sports marketing
- Talent management / employee retention
- United States
Office: 416-946-8610
Mobile: 416-268-7186
Email: richard.powers@rotman.utoronto.ca
Robert Bothwell
Professor of International Relations
- Campus
- Faculty
- Department
Areas of Expertise
- Canada-US relations
- Canadian foreign relations
- Canadian politics and political history
- COVID-19 – Canada’s history of border measures
Office: n/a
Languages: French, Formal Spanish
Email: bothwell@chass.utoronto.ca
Shauna Brail
Associate Professor, Urban Studies
- Campus
- Faculty
- Department
Areas of Expertise
Office: 416-978-0965
Email: shauna.brail@utoronto.ca
Steve Joordens
Professor of Psychology at U of T Scarborough
- Campus
- Department
Areas of Expertise
- Attention
- Connecting psychology to world events
- Consciousness
- Family and interpersonal relationships
- How epidemics affect those with anxiety
- Memory
- Mental impact of isolation and quarantine
- Mental well-being
- Trauma
Office: (416) 287-7469
Email: joordens@utsc.utoronto.ca
Suzanne Sicchia
Assistant Professor
- Campus
- Faculty
- Centres
Areas of Expertise
- Critical pedagogies
- Critical public health
- Critical social theory and health
- Gender and health
- Global health governance
- Global public health
- Health equity
- Institutional ethnography
- Physical distancing measures
- Societal determinants of health
- Violence and women's health
Office: email preferred
Email: suzanne.sicchia@utoronto.ca
Suze G. Berkhout
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry
Clinician-Investigator, University Health Network Centre for Mental Health
- Campus
- Faculty
- Department
- Centres
Areas of Expertise
- Adult psychiatry
- Coping in the face of uncertainty
- Feminist theory / philosophy
- Managing stress and anxiety
- Placebo / Nocebo effects
- Psychosis
- Science and technology studies
Office: 416-340-3747 - Assistant Ms. Bernadette DeFreitas, 416-340-3762
Languages: English
Website
Email: suze.berkhout@uhn.ca
Tamer El-Diraby
Associate Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering
- Campus
- Faculty
- Department
Areas of Expertise
- Asset management
- Construction engineering and management
- Data analytics
- How COVID-19 will disrupt the construction sector
- Information technology
- Management of infrastructure systems
- Process simulation and modeling
- Social network analysis
Office: 416-978-8653
Languages: Arabic
Email: tamer@ecf.utoronto.ca
Teresa Kramarz
Director, Munk One
Co-Director, Environmental Governance Lab
Associate Professor
- Campus
- Faculty
- Department
Areas of Expertise
- COVID-19 situation in Spain
- Environment and politics
- International Organizations (UN and World Bank especially)
- ON RESEARCH LEAVE 2019-2020 ACADEMIC YEAR
Office: 416-946-8825
Languages: Spanish, some French
Website
Email: teresa.kramarz@utoronto.ca
Tina Park
Executive Director and Co-Founder, Responsibility to Protect Project
Junior Fellow, Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History
- Campus
- Faculty
- Centres
Areas of Expertise
- Bilateral relationship between Canada and Korea
- Canadian foreign policy
- Canadian-Korean relations
- COVID-19 – Government response in South Korea versus Italy
- COVID-19 – K-pop concert cancellations
- Impact of COVID-19 on South Korea's automotive sector
- Inter-Korean relations & ROK-US relations
- NATO & Asia-Pacific security
- North Korean nuclear programme & diplomacy & six party talks
- Responsibility to Protect
- South Korean politics
- South Korean politics & economy
- Syria
- UN
Office: 416-828-2361
Website
Email: park.tina@gmail.com