Stéphanie-Anne Girard, PhD, brings over 15 years of natural health product/dietary supplement and pharmaceutical clinical research experience. Dr. Girard’s industry work experience includes a leadership position as Clinical Program Manager at Lallemand Health Solutions (LHS) where she oversaw study design and execution of clinical trials on probiotics, working closely with universities, CROs, private research sites, and KOLs. During this time, she published numerous scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals and has presented at many international conferences and scientific meetings. More recently, Dr. Girard has managed clinical operations teams at ICON Strategic Solutions where she was assigned to Merck Canada.
Dr. Girard holds a PhD in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Florida, a Masters’ degree in Pharmacology from the University of Montreal and a BSc in Microbiology and Immunology from McGill University. Additionally, she completed a Post–Doctoral degree through an Industrial R&D Fellowship Program from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) in collaboration with LHS. Her academic training focused on pre-clinical research investigating the effects of probiotics on post-myocardial infarction depression, which resulted in an understanding of the effect of probiotics on the kinetics of biochemical and physiological cerebral changes following a myocardial infarction. In collaboration with Sponsors from the food industry, she also oversaw several clinical studies investigating prebiotics, specifically, galactooligossacharide (GOS), immunity and digestive health in older adults during cold/flu season.