BIOGRAPHY

Susa Benseler, MD PhD, is a pediatric rheumatologist at the Alberta Children's Hospital, Calgary, Alberta. She is a Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, a clinical epidemiologist and clinician investigator at the Alberta Children's Hospital Research Institute. She currently serves as the Section Chief of Rheumatology and Deputy Head Research, Dept of Pediatrics at the Alberta Children's Hospital, University of Calgary. Susa Benseler leads the Canadian Inflammatory network (CAN Flame), an interdisciplinary partnership of clinicians and researchers focusing on inflammatory diseases. She built the first interdisciplinary program at ACH for inflammatory disease. She previously established the Childhood CNS Vasculitis and Inflammatory Brain Diseases Clinic and Research program at SickKids, Toronto in 2006. She built BrainWorks, an international Childhood CNS Vasculitis Investigator Network, which includes a web-based virtual longitudinal cohort of >400 children with inflammatory brain disease. The associated BrainWorks website is an innovative information and communication tool. It enables physicians’ world-wide to rapidly recognize, diagnose and treat children with inflammatory brain diseases including diagnostic algorithms and treatment protocols. Susa Benseler's ongoing research focuses on rare organ specific and systemic inflammatory diseases. She is the North American leader of childhood inflammatory diseases in CARRA and the incoming chair of CAPRI, the Canadian Pediatric Rheumatology Investigator Network.