Dr. Susa Benseler

2013 Young Investigator Award

Susa Benseler is a staff Rheumatologist at The Hospital for Sick Children, (SickKids) Toronto cross appointed to Rheumatology, Neurology and Paediatric Emergency Medicine.  She graduated from Medical School in Freiburg/Germany, trained in Paediatrics, Intensive Care, Emergency Medicine and Rheumatology. Currently, Susa is an Associate Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Toronto, and a Clinician Investigator and Associate Scientist at the SickKids Research Institute. Canada has been home for her and her family for 12 years.

Susa’s clinical and research passion is childhood vasculitis and inflammatory brain diseases. At SickKids, they established the first Childhood CNS Vasculitis and Inflammatory Brain Diseases Clinic in 2006 and have since learned a ton from each and every patient and their families. Together with many partners in Canada and internationally, they have built BrainWorks, the International Childhood CNS Vasculitis Investigator Network, which includes an innovative web-based data collection and communication tool. It enables physicians’ worldwide to rapidly recognize, diagnose and treat children with CNS vasculitis and inflammatory brain diseases. In great collaborations with many of you and the support of many Paediatric Neurologists, they are constantly working on advancing clinical care, education, research and knowledge translation and exchange for children with inflammatory brain diseases.
Susa has also had the pleasure of being involved in the fantastic Canada-wide JIA research effort – LEAP, hoping to make it an equally great team success as previous research such as REACCH OUT, BBOP and many more.

She believes that in Canada, we have fantastic collaborative frameworks to overall advance paediatric Rheumatology research and other scholarly initiatives and at the same time support and promote careers and other endeavors of each investigator. Susa believes that we have unlimited possibilities working together and advancing our agenda to improve the lives of children living with rheumatic diseases.