Marie-Noelle Simard is an Assistant Professor in the Occupational Therapy Program in the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Montreal and has been a young investigator at the Sainte-Justine UHC since June 2013. She developed her expertise in assessing the neurodevelopmental profiles of children at risk of presenting/having neurodevelopmental disorders during her doctoral and postdoctoral studies. Her main research interests focus on defining best practices in the early screening of neurodevelopmental disorders. As part of her research program, she will pursue the following three objectives: (1) to document current screening practices in order to propose a combination of relevant tools that cover all developmental areas and consolidate a wide spectrum of disorders, while respecting the contingencies of their application in real settings; (2) to pretest the feasibility of using this combination of tools in populations with varying risks and its efficacy in the early identification of children with neurodevelopmental disorders, and (3) to implement a screening strategy in various practice settings based on a knowledge transfer process toward the health network. In conjunction with these three objectives, she is also interested in documenting the profiles of populations with neurodevelopmental disorders in various areas of development as well as identifying the most predictive early signs of a specific disorder as well as documenting trajectories.
In addition to implementing various projects related to her research program, she is also actively involved in the Integrated Research Network in Perinatology of Quebec and Eastern Ontario (Réseau intégré de recherche en périnatalité du Québec et de l’est de l’Ontario - IRNPQEO) directed by Dr. William Fraser.