Ronald Heslegrave

Ronald J. Heslegrave received his PhD in Psychology from the University of Toronto and is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry, Public Health, School of Graduate Studies and the Institute of Medical Sciences at the University of Toronto. Over the last 25 years he has served as a working scientist for the federal government and as the Director of Research in Psychiatry at St. Michael’s and Wellesley Central teaching Hospitals at the University of Toronto. For the last 15 years, he has been the chair of various research ethics boards, which review all medical research for their institution. For the last nine years he has chaired the Board at the University Health Network (including the Toronto General, Toronto Western, Princess Margaret (Cancer) Hospitals) and Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto who together conduct over 1,200 new medical research protocols each year. He was appointed as the inaugural Chair of the Ontario Cancer Research Ethics Board (OCREB) which reviews all multiple-site cancer trials in Ontario. After five years, he remains the Chair of OCREB which now serves 70% of the institutions conducting oncology research in Ontario as a single REB review for all centres. For the last several years, Dr. Heslegrave has also chaired the Harmonization Task Force for the Toronto Academic Health Science Committee which has begun to standardize research ethics board procedures and practices across the nine University of Toronto fully-affiliated hospitals and the University of Toronto.

From a research perspective, Dr. Heslegrave has been working in the area of fatigue and shiftwork for the last 25 years. He has over 200 scientific publications and presentations in a variety of areas and maintains international collaboration in the area of fatigue and shiftwork. Dr. Heslegrave has coauthored three reference guides on shiftwork issues: (i) Making the ShiftWork; (ii) Working the Shift: A Self-Health Guide; and (iii) Fatigue Management: A Guide for Canadian Coast Guard Managers, Officers, and Crew.

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