Born in Belgium to a pharmacist father and a speech therapist mother, I grew up in Kinshasa (RD Congo) in a neighborhood designed for University of Kinshasa faculty members and their families.

When I started medical school, I developed a passion for research. As a result, I fell in love with physiology and pharmacology classes. I was fascinated by how medications could be delivered to the human body and act at a molecular level. After completing medical school, I spent two years in a residency program in internal medicine but switched to clinical pharmacology after a joint department was created between the medical school and pharmacy school at the University of Kinshasa. My interest in applied research was sparked during that time while I worked as a clinical investigator on many malaria-randomized clinical trials.

In 2011, I moved to Montreal to complete a PhD in Pharmacoepidemiology with Dr. Anick Bérard (a world-renowned researcher in the field of drug safety in pregnancy) at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Montréal. As pregnant women are excluded from clinical trials, high-quality evidence is lacking for managing maternal infections in pregnant women. Therefore, I conducted population-based studies using routinely collected healthcare data to inform safe antibiotic prescribing in pregnancy. Following my Ph.D., I moved to London and joined the ICES Provincial Kidney, Dialysis and Transplantation Program (ICES KDT) and the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Western University as a research fellow working with Dr. Amit Garg. During my time at ICES KDT, my research program aimed to reduce medication errors in patients with low kidney function. I conducted population-based studies to inform safer prescribing practices for older adults with chronic kidney disease using routinely collected healthcare data in Ontario (one of the few jurisdictions worldwide with linked population-based kidney lab data). After my postdoctoral fellowship, I was recruited to Western University as an Assistant Professor and joined the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology.

Most Rewarding Moments

One of the most rewarding moments in my early career was when in 2018, one of my PhD manuscripts won the prize for the best paper published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology for quantifying the risk of major congenital malformation associated with the gestational use of antibiotics. The findings of this study have contributed to improving the treatment of maternal infections during early pregnancy. As part of my postdoctoral fellowship, I studied the safety of baclofen in renal patients, a popular muscle relaxant with renal elimination. I have shown that baclofen initiation was associated with significant harm in renal patients. These results contributed to updating the safety medication list developed by the Ontario Renal Network and distributed to healthcare providers and patients to increase awareness and avoid medication incidents. Our study results have also been cited in the clinical decision support tool, which more than 1.9 million clinicians use in 190+ countries.

Advice to Students:

One advice for students is to remain persistent and determined, regardless of circumstances. In most cases, success is proportional to effort.

Interests Outside of Academia:

I spend quality time with my family and friends, watch TV shows, and go for a walk. I have developed a passion for cooking as well.