Professor Mark Tremblay has a Bachelor of Commerce degree in Sports Administration and a Bachelor of Physical and Health Education degree from Laurentian University. His graduate training was from the University of Toronto where he obtained his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from the Department of Community Health with a specialty in Exercise Science. Dr. Tremblay is the Director of Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research (HALO) at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute and Professor of Pediatrics in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology, Fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine, Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, President of the Active Healthy Kids Global Alliance, Founder of the Sedentary Behaviour Research Network, Chair of Outdoor Play Canada, and Adjunct/Visiting Professor at five other universities on four continents. Dr. Tremblay has published >500 scientific papers and book chapters in the areas of childhood obesity, physical activity measurement, exercise physiology, sedentary physiology, outdoor play and health surveillance. His h-index is 79 and his published research has been cited >23,000 times according to Scopus. He has delivered over 800 scholarly conference presentations, including more than 150 invited and keynote addresses, in 21 different countries. Dr. Tremblay received an honorary doctorate from Nipissing University, the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, the Lawson Foundation 60th Anniversary Award, the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology Honour Award, the Victor Marchessault Advocacy Award from the Canadian Pediatric Society, and the Vic Neufeld Mentorship Award in Global Health Research from the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research for his leadership contributions to healthy active living in Canada and around the world. Dr. Tremblay’s most productive work has resulted from his 31-year marriage to his wife Helen, yielding four wonderful children.

Dr. Katzmarzyk is currently a Professor and the Associate Executive Director for Population and Public Health Sciences at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA where he holds the Marie Edana Corcoran Endowed Chair in Pediatric Obesity and Diabetes. Dr. Katzmarzyk is an internationally recognized leader in the field of physical activity and obesity epidemiology, with a special emphasis on pediatrics and ethnic health disparities. He has over two decades of experience in conducting large clinical and population-based studies in both children and adults. Dr. Katzmarzyk has a special interest in global health, and has a record of building research capacity in physical activity and obesity research in developing countries. He has published his research findings in more than 400 scholarly journals and books, and has delivered over 160 invited lectures in 15 countries. He is currently an Associate Editor for Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise and an editorial board member for the International Journal of Obesity, Pediatric Obesity, and Metabolic Syndrome and Related Disorders. In addition to his research efforts, Dr. Katzmarzyk plays a leading role in several national initiatives related to children’s health advocacy, including the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition Science Board and chairing the Research Advisory Committee for the U.S. Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth, a subcommittee of the National Physical Activity Plan Alliance.

Silvia González is a Research Associate of the Group of Epidemiology at the School of Medicine at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia and a member of the Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario. She holds a Nutrition Degree from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and an M.P.H. from the School of Government and the School of Medicine at the Universidad de los Andes and is currently a PhD candidate in Epidemiology at the University of Ottawa. Her research interests include physical activity, sedentary behaviours, active transportation and the built environment among populations of children and adults in Latin America.

Joel Barnes completed a B.Sc. in 2001 from the University of New Brunswick and a M.Sc. in 2003 from the University of Saskatchewan. He was lead author on the Canadian Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth for several years (2011-2018). He is currently a data analyst at Statistics Canada. Outside of work, Joel enjoys running, stand-up paddleboarding, fingerstyle guitar, chess, home renovations and reading.

Salomé grew up in New-Caledonia but moved to France to complete three bachelor’s degrees at the Université de Rennes 2 between 2009 and 2012 in health and physical activity sciences. She pursued with the completion of a MSc in which she worked on the quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the student’s lifestyle behaviour and conditions of living in the city of Rennes. She just completed her PhD in Population Health at the University of Ottawa under the supervision of Dr. Mark Tremblay. Her work focused on the international promotion of an active healthy lifestyle among children and youth. On her free time, she is also an artist and an outdoor enthusiast.

I am an associate Professor at the Universidad de la República (UDELAR) in Uruguay. I have developed different profiles along the ten last years due to my different ubications. The first part of this trajectory was in line with exercise physiology at the University of Extremadura (Spain), while the last part has been more related to physical activity and health. One of the main reasons for my current profile is the position at the UDELAR, where I have started a new project to promote research in physical activity and health because of the lack of information on this field in Uruguay. Since 2017 I have led a new research group and a Lab with the aim of increasing the knowledge and to study the problems related with physical activity and to provide solutions, principally for the Uruguayan population. Thanks to the help of different colleagues around Latin-America I am part of different movements with the same aim but for Latin-American countries. I have been actively involved in pushing forward the policy and practice agenda for physical activity promotion and sedentary behavior reduction in Uruguay. Leading the Global Matrix project in 2018 to create the first report card on indicators of physical activity in Uruguay was an opportunity to increase the background in research skills as well as provide valuable insights to the Uruguayan scientific community.

President and Co-founder, V4 Sport Foundation (Poland)

At V4SPORT we specialize in designing human behaviors, with the aim to get more people more active every day. Our organization has a very specific focus on kids. In order to achieve this, we develop and deliver complex programs that are based on cross sectoral partnerships, where private, public and non-governmental organizations work together to develop new ways of combating inactivity. Over the past 9 years, we have implemented a large number of national and international initiatives, with partners from more than 30 countries, for example MoveWeek project, which is an integral part of the NowWeMOVE campaign. Some of these initiatives involved creation of the new infrastructure (we have built over 60 healthy trails around Poland), but most of them use storytelling (based on stories we have created), involve gamification, new technologies and sometimes during the design thinking process, we change the meaning of things – in a way for example, that physical fitness test becomes a fun activity for kids.

Jakub has also co-founded the first Active Healthy Kids Report Card in Poland. He serves on the Executive Committees of two global organizations: Active Healthy Kids Global Alliance and International Sport and Culture Association and he is the member of the Rural Sport Commission of the Polish Olympic Committee. Jakub is a graduate of International Relations at the Social Studies Department in Wroclaw, Poland. He studied in Poland, France, US and UK. He has over 12 years of experience in developing and leading sport and active healthy lifestyle projects, both on national and international level. He is an experienced coach and trainer. Jakub’s portfolio includes over 2000 hours of training in areas such as: strategic development, project management, fundraising based on Cause-Related Marketing and Corporate Social Responsibility.

www.v4sport.eu