Faculty Faces

Teacher-Clinician
Dr. Mathieu Walker knows the value of a good heart, having chosen cardiology as his specialty.
After graduating from McGill’s Faculty of Medicine in 1999, Dr. Walker went on to residencies in Internal medicine and Cardiology, also at McGill, and subsequently completed a fellowship in Echocardiography at the Montreal Heart Institute. He is currently an attending cardiologist at St. Mary’s Hospital Center, Co-Director of its Cardiology Residency Training Program and Undergraduate Course Chair of Unit 2 (Gas, Fluid & Electrolytes Homeostasis) of the Faculty’s Basis of Medicine component.  Dr. Walker is the 2011 recipient of the Osler Award, presented by senior medical students to a professor who they believe has made the most outstanding contribution to their medical education. “In my experience, in-depth knowledge of a subject is best acquired by teaching it to others,” says Dr. Walker. “Despite lecturing on the same topics year after year, I am often faced with an interesting new question I can’t answer and always learn something new each time. Accompanying the students in their path towards acquiring new concepts brings me great personal satisfaction and drives me to perfect my teaching skills.”

Pioneering Researcher
Dr. Maya Saleh is a researcher in the Complex Traits Group of the McGill University Life Sciences Complex. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine, as well as an Associate member in Microbiology and Immunology and in Biochemistry in the McGill Faculty of Medicine. She is also a Medical Scientist at the Research Institute of the MUHC. Her investigations into new biologic therapies for inflammatory immune disorders and cancers have earned her numerous awards, including the McGill Maude Abbott Prize in 2011. “What makes McGill University an exciting place to be for conducting ground-breaking research is the concentration of outstanding scientists, the multi-disciplinary research environment, and the terrific support system and infrastructure for research,” says Dr. Saleh.

Nurse Practitioner
Very early in her life, while growing up in China, Canada and the United-States, Peggy Chen always worked towards one day becoming a doctor. After having completed her B.Sc. with a major in Physiology and minor in Neuroscience at McGill University, she changed her mind. “I realized once having gone through the process and having seen more of the ins and outs of the profession, that nursing might actually be the better path for me,” says Peggy. Instead of going back to school and starting over, she applied to the only Direct-Entry program in the country offered by McGill University, and is currently pursuing a Master’s of Nursing, with the goal of becoming a Nurse Practitioner. “I wanted patient interaction that some doctors rarely get the opportunity to have.  However, I wanted more responsibility and more of a leadership role than what a staff nurse may be given, which is why I chose the Master’s,” explains Peggy. Since starting the program in 2009, Peggy has been working as an extern on the hematology/oncology unit at the Montreal General Hospital of the MUHC, receiving Alumni Awards for each year of study.  She is also the representative of her class for the McGill School of Nursing’s Student/Faculty Advisory Committee.

Medical Student
Twenty-one year old Esli Osmanlliu started at McGill as a Med-P student in 2009 and is now Executive President of the Medical Student’s Society (MSS) of McGill University. The Albanian-born Esli is excited to be studying medicine in Montreal, his home since the age of nine. “Many reasons motivated my choice to join the McGill Faculty of Medicine, among them: the impressive qualities of the professors; the vitality of the student body and the Faculty’s will to support their initiatives.”  As MSS President, Esli is working with fellow medical students at McGill and across Quebec to initiate a community involvement strategic plan. “I want to promote a clear sense of unity and sharing through social engagement,” says Esli. Although Pediatrics is among his career preferences, he intends to keep his options open. “No matter what I choose, community involvement will certainly define an important aspect of my future career,” he says. Esli was recently awarded the Québec Medical Association Excellence Scholarship for his leadership role in the creation and evolution of the educational camp L’Envol, which offers a wide-range of activities to children from a network of partner schools in the Montreal borough of Côte-des-Neiges.