Meet Our Team | Canada East Spine Centre, Saint John, New Brunswick

Erin Bigney, MA Experimental and Applied Psychology

Director of Research

Erin Bigney is the Director of Research for Canada East Spine Centre. Bigney holds a Master’s degree in Experimental and Applied Psychology and has worked in the field of research for the past 15 years. Bigney’s educational and work experiences have focused on experimental design, methodology and program evaluation. She has multiple peer-reviewed publications and has presented at national and international scientific conferences.

Eden Richardson, B.A. Political Science & English, Graduate Certificate-Human Resources Management

Database Project Manager

Eden oversees one of the largest sites for CSORN (Canadian Spine Outcomes and Research Network) of the 23 participating sites in Canada through the Canadian Spine Society. Eden also works for the Canadian Spine Society nationally as the Data Quality Coordinator and Trainer for CSORN because of her fantastic work with CSORN registry. Eden has hosted national training sessions for research coordinators and surgeons on data quality for CSORN. Eden also runs all the sub-studies for CSORN which includes sub-studies on adult deformity, cervical spondylotic myelopathy, and degenerative spondylolisthesis. Eden completed her Bachelor of Arts at the University of New Brunswick, Saint John campus with a double major in Political Science and English and graduated with First Division. She has also completed her Graduate Certificate in Human Resources Management at Seneca College. Eden will also be starting her Masters in Business Administration in 2022.

Jill Kearney

Operations Manager

Jill Kearney is the Operations Manager for Canada East Spine Centre. She has several years of quality assurance and management experience in a business environment, which translates well to her role with CESC. Jill manages our employees and is responsible for quality inspection of our systems and processes. She also oversees our Clinical Trials program. Other responsibilities include coordinating our Research in Medicine (RIM) students, overseeing our social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter, and our maintaining the CESC website. Jill assists with our valuable work with the Canadian Spine Outcomes and Research Network and the Rick Hansen Institute as well. As our main patient contact, she enjoys working closely with Orthopaedic and Neurosurgery patients and their surgeons for consenting and follow-up involvement in our research projects.

Dr. Uday Kundap

Clinical Trials Coordinator

Dr. Uday Kundap is a pharmacy graduate with a Ph.D. degree qualified in the field of Pharmacology and toxicology from Monash University, Malaysia and has a post-doctoral fellowship from the University of Montreal, Canada. He is interested in drug discoveries, clinical research, clinical trial monitoring and has 2 years of experience in projects related to clinical trials and BA-BE studies for investigational drugs, protocol writing, scientific publications, and international presentation. Before joining his PhD, he was working as a Project-coordinator and a Pharmacist at Lambda Therapeutics and Research in Mumbai, India. He completed his PhD from Monash University Malaysia in the field of neuropharmacology for projects related to cognitive dysfunction in epilepsy, reverse pharmacology for drug discoveries, and development of animal models for epilepsy in zebrafish. Dr Kundap was working as a Sr. Post-doctoral scientist at Pierre Drapeau-Eric Samarut’s research lab in the University of Montreal Hospital Centre (CRCHUM), Montreal, Canada for projects related to precision medicine for epilepsy, drug discoveries, pre-clinical model development, qPCR, Cre-LoxP technology for gene modification, Confocal-imaging, Loss of function - gene mutation in zebrafish animals and product development. Dr. Kundap has 17 scientific research publications with total citations of 273 with i10 index of 8 with 8506 publication downloads (Frontiers Loop) since 2017. He received a number of research and travel grants during his PhD and Postdoctoral studies. During his PhD from 2015 – 2019 he received US 10,000$ for travel related to research presentations in the field of epilepsy and neuroscience. He was also awarded a Monash University Graduate scholarship of RM 95,000 (Malaysian Ringgit) during his PhD. While pursuing his post-doctoral studies, he managed to receive a prestigious FRQS (Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Société) grant funding of CAD 135,000$ from the government of Quebec, Canada for 2019-2022.

Rory McPhee

Research Assistant

Rory McPhee holds a BA (1st Class, Hons.) in psychology from the University of New Brunswick. He is currently undergoing his Master’s in Experimental Psychology. His Master’s thesis focuses on religious fundamentalism and ideological prejudice, and the subject matter of his previous research has also included lie detection, technology use by students, and research methods. Rory has presented research at the INPACT conference in Hungary in 2017 and has contributed to research presented at a number of international conferences. Rory has also contributed to a number of research projects conducted by CESC as a volunteer. Having volunteered for CESC for over a year, Rory is excited to take on a larger role within the organization.

Janice (Loop-D) Kenny RN, BN

Neurosurgery Case Manager

Loop-d graduated with a Diploma in Nursing from the Saint John School of Nursing in 1981, and completed Post-Graduate studies in Neuroscience Nursing from the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University in 1987. More recently, she completed her undergraduate degree in Nursing from UNBSJ in 2006. Loop-d has held the National CNA Certification in Neuroscience Nursing since 1991. She has served on the National Board of Directors for the Canadian Association of Neuroscience Nurses and was the National President in 1995. She is currently practicing Nursing in the Neurosciences. Loop-D's clinical interests are in Neuro Trauma, and Neuro Critical Care in the management of Brain & Spinal Cord Injuries.

Taylor Smith

Summer Research Assistant

Taylor Smith worked with us as a Volunteer Research Assistant and has joined CESC as a Summer Research Assistant for 2023. She is currently a Master of Science in Kinesiology student at UNB Fredericton and did her graduate project with us on the impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Wait Times for Spinal Surgery across Canada. She is a registered massage therapist which is where she discovered her interest and passion for studying the human body. In the Fall Taylor will be entering the Master of Physician Assistant Studies program at the University of Manitoba to further her knowledge in the medical field.

Amanda Vandewint, BSc. Biomedical Science, MD Candidate

Medical Student Research Coordinator

Amanda Vandewint began her journey with Canada East Spine Centre through the Volunteer Mentorship Program and then worked as a full-time Research Administrative Assistant followed by Research Coordinator for CESC prior to starting medical school at Dalhousie University in 2021. She completed her BSc. in Biomedical Science with option in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Ottawa. Amanda's current role as Medical Student Research Coordinator is focused on supporting the different stages of research project progression. This includes a particular concentration on providing education in the areas of research ethics board application preparation along with data set cleaning and coding. The opportunity to be involved in such an incredible variety of projects including those offering interdisciplinary collaborations is one aspect of working at CESC that Amanda finds especially exciting.