Canada is investing in the next generation of researchers through the Canada Impact+ Research Training Awards, a federal initiative designed to attract outstanding research talent to Canada and strengthen the country's research capacity in priority fields, including health and biotechnology. Part of the broader Canada Global Impact+ Research Talent Initiative, the awards support doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers from around the world, as well as Canadians returning home to continue their research careers.
At the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), the awards are helping recruit exceptional young researchers whose work addresses some of the most pressing challenges in mental health, from developing safer artificial intelligence (AI) models, advancing our understanding of the genetic factors that contribute to psychiatric illness to building better tools to understand the developing brain.
Developing safer and more trustworthy AI models
Abhishek Singh Dhadwal didn’t originally consider a career in research. Trained as a computer scientist and having previously worked in finance technology, his path toward research was shaped by watching his sister, a physician, navigate the immense pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic. Seeing the long hours she worked and the significant amount of time spent on administrative and manual tasks inspired him to explore how technology could reduce workload and make healthcare systems more effective for both providers and patients. Motivated by the potential of AI, he developed privacy-preserving clinical decision-support tools during his master’s degree at Arizona State University.
At CAMH, he now uses his unique combination of expertise in computer science, biomedical informatics, and computational psychiatry to address one of AI’s most common safety flaws: sycophancy. It describes AI’s tendency to be overly helpful and agreeable to the point where it can unintentionally validate a user's harmful thoughts, delusions, or incorrect medical beliefs. In a clinical context, an AI that prioritizes "being nice" over "being truthful" can reinforce dangerous behaviors or delay professional care.
Through surveys, safety benchmarks and technical safeguards, Abhishek's PhD research aims to create a framework for making AI systems more trustworthy, effective, and safe in mental health research and care.
"I'm working on making AI safer for people, especially in mental healthcare. CAMH offers a rare combination of clinical expertise, research excellence, and mentorship that makes this work possible. I'm incredibly grateful for this award and for the support I've received from my supervisors and colleagues. It's exciting to contribute to research that has the potential to make a real difference in people's lives," says Abhishek.
Advancing our understanding of genetics in psychiatric conditions
For Dr. Dina Issakova returning to Canada for her postdoctoral training at CAMH is a full circle moment. Having left Canada after completing her undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto to pursue her PhD at the University of Pennsylvania, she’s excited about returning to the country and community that helped shape her as a scientist.
At CAMH, Dr. Issakova is performing genomic analyses within the Toronto Adolescent and Youth (TAY) Cohort Study, which follows 1,500 youth to understand how certain mental health symptoms develop, who is at an increased likelihood of developing certain mental health challenges, and how we can better support young people. Specifically, she is evaluating whether low-cost whole-genome sequencing, which examines a person’s entire genome and is cheaper than current standard methods, can provide a practical pathway toward using genetic information in mental health research and, eventually, clinical care.
"Right now, mental health care is largely reactive," says Dr. Issakova. "My hope is that one day genetic information could help us better understand an individual's risk and trajectory, allowing earlier interventions and better outcomes. While still in its early stages, this research could help pave the way for more personalized approaches to mental health care and improved understanding of psychiatric disorders in young people."
Beyond her research, Dr. Issakova is committed to science outreach and advocacy. She co-hosts ‘A Coffee with Compbio’, a podcast by Boston Women in Bioinformatics, recently started as a grassroots advocate for the International OCD Foundation, and mentors students from underrepresented backgrounds pursuing careers in science. Long term, she hopes to establish her own research lab dedicated to the molecular and genetic mechanisms of psychiatric illness—one whose questions are shaped by the communities it seeks to serve.
"I love that CAMH has so many researchers approaching mental health research from many different angles—it’s a great environment for collaboration, and I’m always able to find an expert for any part of my project within the institution. I’m grateful for this award as it allows me to grow my research by helping fund potential expansions of my project that will allow us to make further strides in our understanding of youth mental health," says. Dr. Issakova.
Building better tools to understand the developing brain
An unconventional career path brought Samantha K. Eaton to CAMH. After completing degrees in chemical engineering, biomedical engineering, and psychology at the University of Texas at San Antonio, Duke University, and University of Washington, respectively, she reflected on how she wanted to use her unique skills and what future impact she’d want her work to have.
"As I thought about the kind of legacy I wanted to leave, I realized I was passionate about mental health care and wanted to use my background in coding, biology, and health research to help improve people's lives. That led me to computational neuroscience, where I can combine those interests in a way that feels both meaningful and purposeful," Samantha explains.
For her PhD, she is building better tools to understand early life neurodevelopment, a time where the brain is undergoing profound structural transformation at rates unmatched throughout the human lifespan. In fact, the total brain volume more than doubles in the first year of life alone. Small differences in this complex process have been implicated in various neurodevelopmental conditions, but despite this, fundamental gaps remain in our understanding of the brain’s organization and development during this critical period.
Samantha hopes that her new method of modelling how pathways emerge and evolve across development, can help establish typical developmental trajectories and identify changes associated with neurodevelopmental conditions. Such insights could support earlier detection of atypical development and inform more targeted interventions, bringing us closer to a future in which every child receives the right support at the right time.
"CAMH brings together world-class expertise in neuroinformatics, brain imaging, and mental health research, making it the ideal environment to develop tools that are both technically rigorous and clinically meaningful. Being here allows me to integrate my interdisciplinary background in engineering and computational neuroscience within a collaborative network of researchers, while contributing to work that can directly benefit the people and communities CAMH serves. Receiving this award is a tremendous honour and a recognition that better tools for studying the developing brain can make a meaningful difference for children and families," says Samantha.
Learn more about how CAMH supports the next generation of mental health and addictions researchers through the Koerner Centre for Research Training.
