COGS 3RD INTERNATIONAL MEETING (2026)
Keynote Speakers
Dr. Angela Kaida
Dr. Angela Kaida is a global health epidemiologist and recognized leader in sex, gender, and health research. She serves as the Scientific Director of the Institute of Gender and Health at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), a role she assumed in January 2023.
Dr. Anita Ho
Dr. Anita Ho is a bioethicist with a unique combined academic training and experience in philosophy, clinical/organizational ethics, public health, global health, and business.
Keynote Title: AI Health Monitoring in a Gendered World: Ethical Considerations
Dr. Gillian Einstein
Dr. Gillian Einstein is a full Professor at the University of Toronto asking the question, “Why do more women than men have Alzheimer disease?” Her funding comes from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Brain Canada, The Ontario Brain Institute, the Centre for Aging and Brain Health Innovation (CABHI), and the Women’s Brain Health Initiative and is directed toward understanding how early life events, including surgeries and cultural practices, affect the trajectory of women’s brain health over the lifespan.
Keynote Title: Dispelling Taboo & Ignorance about the gendered body: Situated Neuroscience
Dr. Gina Rippon
Updates coming soon
Dr. Angela Kaida
Dr. Angela Kaida is a global health epidemiologist and recognized leader in sex, gender, and health research. She serves as the Scientific Director of the Institute of Gender and Health at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), a role she assumed in January 2023. In this capacity, she leads national research and training initiatives advancing sex- and gender-related health priorities and supports the implementation of CIHR’s strategic plan. During her tenure, the Institute is housed at Simon Fraser University (SFU), where she is a Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences and holds the Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in HIV and Sexual & Reproductive Health Equity.
Dr. Anita Ho
Dr. Anita Ho is a bioethicist with a unique combined academic training and experience in philosophy, clinical/organizational ethics, public health, global health, and business. She is currently Clinical Professor at the Centre for Applied Ethics at University of British Columbia, Associate Professor at the UCSF Bioethics Program, and Vice President of Ethics for CommonSpirit Health in California. An elected fellow of The Hastings Center and an international scholar of more than 100 publications, Anita's current research focuses on feminist bioethics, ethical dimensions of utilizing AI in health care delivery, research ethics, supportive decision making in health care, and end-of-life care issues. She is particularly interested in systemic, gendereed, and social justice issues arising in the use of AI in health care settings. Her book, Live Like Nobody is Watching: Relational Autonomy in the Age of Artificial Intelligence Health Monitoring, was published by Oxford University Press in 2023.
Presentation title: AI Health Monitoring in a Gendered World: Ethical Considerations
AI-enabled health monitoring technologies are increasingly integrated into clinical, home-based, and long-term care settings, often promoted as tools to enhance efficiency, safety, and individual autonomy. Yet AI models are developed and deployed within social and institutional contexts shaped by gendered norms, unequal distributions of care work, and entrenched power asymmetries. This presentation argues that ethical analyses centered on individual consent and privacy are insufficient for assessing the justice implications of AI health monitoring. Drawing on feminist bioethics and a relational conception of autonomy, it examines how gendered expectations regarding caregiving, responsibility, independence, and risk shape both the adoption and expectations around AI health monitoring. The analysis highlights how institutional funding structures, design assumptions, and governance arrangements can constrain meaningful choice, redistribute surveillance and care labor, and differentially burden different populations while framing monitoring as empowering. The presentation concludes by advancing a justice-oriented relational framework that emphasizes interdependence, relational accountability, and the structural conditions necessary for autonomy in technologically mediated care.
Dr. Gillian Einstein
I am a full Professor at the University of Toronto asking the question, “Why do more women than men have Alzheimer disease?” My funding comes from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Brain Canada, The Ontario Brain Institute, the Centre for Aging and Brain Health Innovation (CABHI), and the Women’s Brain Health Initiative and is directed toward understanding how early life events, including surgeries and cultural practices, affect the trajectory of women’s brain health over the lifespan. The Einstein Lab’s current focus is on how estradiol loss and treatment as well as stigma and immigration affect memory and cognition in diverse populations of women.
In addition to being a full professor in Psychology, I hold The Wilfred and Joyce Posluns Chair in Women’s Brain Health and Aging, am Adjunct Scientist at Baycrest and Women’s College Hospitals, and Honorary Doctor of Medicine, Linköping University, Sweden. I am also a board member of the International Gender Medicine Society, past-Chair of the Canadian Institutes of Health’s Institute of Gender and Health Advisory Board (2014-2024), and Founder and President of the Canadian Organization of Gender and Sex (COGS) Research. I lead the Sex & Gender Hub for the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration and Aging and Co-Leads the University of Toronto’s Women’s Brain Health Rounds.
I use a methodology that I developed called, "Situated Neuroscience" that employs a combination of qualitative, quantitative (questionnaires), and physiological (neuropsychology, brain imaging, blood biomarkers, polysomnography) methods (Very Mixed Methods) to explore how both sex and gender mediate women’s brain health.
Fun fact: I majored in Art History as an undergraduate at Harvard and love spending time in museums and having interdisciplinary conversations!
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