Alexis Turgeon-Fournier

Dr. Turgeon obtained his medical degree in 1999 from Laval University. After completing his residency in anesthesiology, he pursued a Master’s degree in Clinical Epidemiology. Subsequently, he furthered his training in intensive care medicine at the University of Ottawa, while also undertaking postdoctoral research training within the Clinical Epidemiology Unit of the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. Currently, he is a clinical physician and full professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care at Laval University’s Faculty of Medicine. Over the past five years, Dr. Turgeon has supervised more than ten students at both the Master’s and PhD levels in epidemiology. He continues to mentor Master’s students while overseeing a postdoctoral fellow in medicine. He also practices intensive care medicine and anesthesiology at CHU de Québec-Université Laval, at the Hôpital de l’Enfant-Jésus.

Chairholder of the Canada Research Chair in Critical Care Neurology and Trauma, he leads major research programs funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). Recently, he received substantial funding from them for his BRAINapt study, an international platform for adaptive clinical trials dedicated to the discovery and evaluation of interventions aimed at improving outcomes in adult patients with traumatic brain injury. In parallel with the deployment of this platform, he is also working on the multicenter NeurO2 study, also funded by CIHR, which focuses on measuring cerebral oxygenation in critically ill patients admitted to neurological intensive care units. In recent years, his work has focused particularly on determining neurological prognosis (TBI-Prognosis Study) and understanding decision-making related to care levels for neurocritical patients (TBI-QualE).

Among his major projects is the HEMOTION study, a randomized clinical trial funded by CIHR, aimed at determining the optimal transfusion threshold for victims of moderate and severe traumatic brain injuries. This study, whose principal co-investigators were Dr. F. Lauzier and Dr. D. Fergusson, was conducted in Canada, England, France, and Brazil. The results of this study were published last year in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.

Dr. Turgeon’s work is supported by numerous grants, including those from the CIHR Foundation on optimal practices in neurological intensive care and trauma, as well as his participation in various network grant projects. He has also been a key player in research during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition to his research work, Dr. Turgeon is the founder and co-director of the Canadian Traumatic Brain Injury Research Consortium (CTRC), the director de Cochrane Canada Francophone, and an active member of the Canadian Critical Care Trials Group (CCCTG).

Furthermore, he is the founder and co-director of SCIENTA, the Centre for the Valorization and Exploitation of Data at CHU de Québec-Université Laval, a state-of-the-art data science infrastructure established to meet research access needs. Dr. Turgeon also leads the Clinical Trials Unit at the CHU de Québec-Université Laval Research Centre, one of the eleven specialized units within the Canadian Clinical Trials Units (CTU) network. Through this platform, he and his team share their expertise and provide specialized support to researchers and industry partners in clinical research.