Susan Marlin

President & CEO, Clinical Trials Ontario; Nominated Principal Applicant, CanReview

Susan Marlin is a trusted leader in Canada’s research ethics and clinical trials community. As the President and CEO of Clinical Trials Ontario (CTO), she collaborates to strengthen the clinical trials environment while maintaining the highest ethical and quality standards. Susan was foundational in establishing CTO’s streamlined research ethics review system to enable a single review for multi-site clinical trials and health research studies in Ontario. Now widely adopted, the system has more than 10,000 users, 150 participating sites, 280 pharmaceutical and medical device companies, and 20 qualified research ethics boards.

Building on her record of uniting partners to streamline clinical trials, Susan is advancing key projects across Canada. She is the nominated principal investigator for the Canada-wide CHEER project, supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) to streamline ethics reviews for child health research. She is also the nominated principal applicant for the CanReview collaboration to establish a pan-Canadian single research ethics review system, supported by the CIHR-funded Accelerating Clinical Trials (ACT) Consortium.

Prior to CTO, Susan served as the Associate Vice-Principal at Queen’s University, working with the Canadian Cancer Trials Group to coordinate clinical trials and lead the development and implementation of the Ethics and Regulatory Office. Susan has served as President of the Canadian Association of Research Ethics Boards, and as a member of the CIHR Research Integrity Committee, the Ontario Cancer Research Ethics Board, and the Tri-Agency Panel on the Responsible Conduct of Research. Susan sits on the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of Life Sciences Ontario. She serves on the Operations Committee and is co-chair of the Ethics Committee for the ACT Consortium. She is on the Management Team for the Ontario Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research Support Unit, and she is an Adjunct Lecturer at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.