Michael G. Tyshenko
Senior Health Risk Analyst
PhD, MPA
Joined RSI in 2018
Personal introduction
My experience is interdisciplinary with training in Life Sciences (MSc., PhD Biology, Queen’s University, Canada), Public Health (post-doctoral studies, University of Ottawa, Canada), and Public Administration (a second Master’s degree in Public Administration from Queen’s University). I have complementary expertise in several areas including determinants of health, molecular and cellular biology, health policy, global health, tropical medicine, risk management of infectious disease, communicable and non-communicable diseases, public health omics, bioethics, and health risk communication. As a result of my broad focus on risk communication as it intersects with science policy I have been sought after by different Canadian and foreign government departments in the areas of blood safety, adverse drug reactions, food safety, food fraud, infectious disease transmission factors, non-communicable disease, pandemic planning and zoonotic disease management.
Current Focus
Dr. Tyshenko is involved with various health risk issues and is the lead on chemical peer reviews at RSI. He continues international research on infectious disease health policy and evidence-based decision-making for SARS, MERS and COVID-19 with a collaborative working group from China, USA, and the UAE. Other ongoing work in Nepal with the Ministry of Health in collaboration with the Univesity of Ottawa is focused on pandemic planning and the use of commercial UAVs (drones) to deliver antivirals, vaccines and other medications to remote areas inaccessible during monsoon season.
Works and Accomplishments
Dr. Tyshenko has published over 80 peer reviewed manuscripts, 10 book chapters and 2 books. He held the prestigious McLaughlin Chair Award in Biological Risk Assessment from 2009-2013 at the University of Ottawa. He was responsible for developing and delivering several Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health styled short courses in Public Health during a five year collaborative university-government project in China. A similar two-year project to identify public health gaps and policy needs was completed in Latin America (Costa Rica) in partnership between the University of Ottawa, the Costa Rican government, and the Universidad de Costa Rica. From 2014-2018 he was the scientific director for Risk.com a health risk web portal providing summaries of potential hazards of concern.
Case studies associated with Michael G. Tyshenko
The Alliance of Blood Operators (ABO) needed a coherent risk management framework to guide decision-making on the delivery of blood services by its member organizations, which would help produce consistent decision-making processes and outcomes across the different national jurisdictional and regulatory structures. The RBDM approach was meant to support a shift in risk decision-making in national blood services organizations from one focused on minimizing all risks to blood quality and supply, with little concern for costs, to a risk-based approach in which resources are allocated according to risk and the application of financial resources and management rigour is proportional to the risk they are addressing.
Read MoreExtra-curricular
I am an avid triathlete and have completed over 100 Olympic distance triathlons, several half-Ironmans and 3 Ironmans. I represented Canada as an age-group athlete at the World Championships in Deerhurst before transitioning to longer distance races.
