Dayre McNally

Born on Prince Edward Island and raised by two great parents (Jim and Paulette). Along with his two wonderful sisters (Donnay and Kathie) he spent his first two decades participating in community and school interested in team sport (hockey, baseball, rugby) and learning (music, science). He attended UPEI majoring in Chemistry, where he received his first research experience working to improve animal nutrition. Following completion of his BSc he moved to Ottawa to complete a PhD in Biochemistry at Carleton University focused on hibernation and free tolerance. Following his PhD he moved to Halifax for medical school where he had his first exposure to clinical research, publishing multiple epidemiological papers. During his pediatric residency training in Saskatoon at the University of Saskatchewan he was encouraged to study vitamin D, investigating its role in unexplained pediatric arthralgia and acute lower respiratory tract infections.

He continued this work during his subspecialty training in pediatric critical care at the University of Ottawa, including a multicentre study identifying high rates of vitamin D deficiency in PICU and association with worse clinical outcome. As staff he has performed two Health Canada regulated pilot studies identifying regimens capable of preventing and rapid normalizing vitamin D deficiency in critically ill children and is presently leading a multicentre CIHR funded RCT to determine whether rapid correction of vitamin D deficiency improves outcomes in critical illness.  In addition to work on vitamin D he has active research programs exploring novel methodologies to improve the efficiency of systematic review completion and is one of the co-founders of the Canadian Science Fair Journal. When not at work he, his wife (Loren) and two children (Owen and Connor) can be found doing science experiments and playing sports.