Accelerating Discovery: Killam Accelerator Research Fellowship Lectures 2025

Hamideh Bayrampour is an Associate Professor of Midwifery in the department of Family Practice, an Associate Member in the School of Population and Public Health, and a faculty member in the Women+ and Children’s Health Sciences program. Dr. Bayrampour is an international expert in the field of pregnancy-specific anxiety. Her research is focused on identification of perinatal mental health issues and development of valid and reliable assessment tools and screening approaches suitable for perinatal population. She is the recipient of a Steiner Young Investigator Award from the North American Society for Psychosocial Obstetrics & Gynecology, and has received 6 CIHR grants, two as the Principal Investigator, and four as a Co-Investigator.

Mental health issues such as depression and anxiety are common during pregnancy and the postpartum period, so identifying and addressing these conditions can improve health outcomes. Dr. Bayrampour examines the utility of emerging knowledge and innovative technology related to mental health to determine the practicality of these approaches during the perinatal period. Her recent work focuses on technology transfer research aims to examine the usefulness of a person’s speech to predict depressive and anxiety disorders during pregnancy. 

Mary Jung is a Professor in the School of Health and Exercise Sciences at UBC Okanagan. One of her major research interests is developing and testing diabetes prevention interventions designed for community implementation and sustainability, with a lens towards improving equity, diversity, and inclusivity in all research endeavours. She leads the Diabetes Prevention Research Group, is the founder of the diabetes prevention program “Small Steps for Big Changes”, and director of UBC’s Centre for Health Behaviour Change. Dr. Jung has been named a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Scholar, a CIHR Early Career Foundation grant recipient, and received the Diabetes Canada National Volunteer Innovation Award.

Dr. Jung’s current research is examining the implementation and effectiveness of Small Steps for Big Changes as it scales up across 50 urban cities across 8 provinces in Canada, and the state of Queensland, Australia. Through this project, Dr. Jung and her research team examine factors associated with inclusive access, and test the program’s effectiveness at reducing type 2 diabetes incidence and health care costs, and how organizations can optimally implement a diabetes prevention program.

Laura Parfrey is an Associate Professor in the departments of Botany and Zoology and Canada Research Chair in Protist Ecology. She runs the Parfrey lab, which works to understand how symbiosis shapes the ecology and evolution of microbes and influences the biology and stress resilience of macroalgae and other marine host organisms. In the long term, she aims to use this knowledge to develop microbiome-based strategies to enhance the productivity and climate resilience of marine foundation species (seagrass and kelp), and advance sustainable aquaculture and coastal restoration efforts. Dr. Parfrey was named one of the most highly cited investigators worldwide by Clarivate Analytics, and received a Wall Research Team Faculty Award for her project “Testing the influence of microbes and sediment chemistry on seagrass restoration”.

Her recent work is on identifying novel microbiome manipulation strategies and testing the ability of ecological distributions to predict which potential probiotic strains are likely to have the strongest impacts on host biology. Along coastal B.C., the Parfrey Lab is investigating how water column and biofilm microbes colonize marine hosts, such as invertebrates, seaweed and seagrass, and how these host-associated microbes impact the host and overall ecosystem health.