Founder and Director of HOPELab

Farinaz (Naz) Havaei, RN, MERM, PhD
(she/her)

Dr. Havaei is a registered nurse, an Assistant Professor of Nursing at the University of British Columbia, a health system researcher, a Michael Smith Health Research BC Scholar (2021-2026), and the founder and director of the Healthy Outcomes by improving Patient and Provider Experiences Lab (HOPELab) at UBC. Dr. Havaei has a passion for exploring and addressing workplace and policy factors that enable healthy outcomes for providers, patients, and healthcare organizations. She is recognized as an emerging leader in health system research and has contributed to policy, practice and media platforms that support knowledge mobilization and research impact. To date, Dr. Havaei’s program of research has received over $8 million in funding support from local, provincial and national funding agencies as primary or co-investigator, resulting in nearly 50 peer-reviewed publications and over 50 conference presentations. Dr. Havaei teaches nursing leadership at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Current HOPELab Team

Megan Kaulius, MA
(she/her)

Megan graduated with a BAH in Psychology from Queen’s University and a Master’s from UBC’s School of Kinesiology. She has created, implemented, managed, and researched numerous health and well-being initiatives in healthcare and academic settings, including most recently as the Manager of Research Projects and Resources at the Centre for Applied Research in Mental Health and Addiction at Simon Fraser University. Megan joined Dr. Havaei’s team in April 2022 and helps to oversee Dr. Havaei’s program of work. Megan has a variety of research interests and is deeply passionate about improving health outcomes for providers and patients.

Andy Ma, MEd
(he/him)

Andy graduated with a MEd in Measurement, Evaluation, and Research Methodology (MERM) from UBC in 2022, and earned his BAH in Psychology from Carleton University in 2019. As a Master’s student, Andy was involved in research initiatives concerning health and well-being in healthcare, and helped lead projects in eye-tracking and robotics-based early STEM education. His research interests include intuitive data visualization, quantitative modelling, and survey deployment. Andy joined Dr. Havaei’s team in April 2022.

Sabina Staempfli, RN, MN
(she/her)

Sabina started working with Dr. Havaei as a Research Assistant in June 2020 when she began her PhD at the UBC School of Nursing. The two have worked together on many research projects particularly in the long-term care sector. Dr. Havaei is also Sabina’s doctoral supervisor. When she isn’t studying or working on a research project, Sabina is working as an Emergency Nurse in Toronto, riding her bike with her growing family, and playing hockey on a local rink. Find her on twitter at @svstaempfli

Tanin Naderi, BSN
(she/her)

Tanin graduated from Bachelor of Science in Nursing from BCIT in December 2020. Since September 2022, Tanin is completing her Master of Science in Nursing at UBC, and also started working with Dr. Havaei since January 2023 as a research assistant. Dr. Havaei is also Tanin’s masters thesis supervisor. When she is not studying, Tanin works on-call at the Forensic Psychiatric Hospital with over two years of experience with complex concurrent disorders and delivering trauma-informed care. In her free time outside of academia and work, Tanin values spending time with her family (and their family dog) whether it being watching TV together, having dinner together, or just laughing together and cherishing the moments.

Rob Paquin, RN, MSc., PhD candidate
(he/him)

Rob is a PhD candidate at King’s College London and a BCIT’s School of Health Sciences faculty member. Rob’s research focuses on understanding human-centred design practices to produce innovative solutions for healthcare service delivery problems through qualitative methods. His research interests include service design approaches, digital health service development, value constructs in healthcare quality improvement, and decision sciences. Most recently, Rob led the strategy and development team for a $3.2 million Canadian Digital Supercluster Project to create a virtual simulation platform for nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Previously, Rob was a faculty educator in BCIT’s post-graduate emergency nursing program and practised clinically as an emergency department nurse and paramedic.