Ranil Sonnadara
President, CRO & CEO
Ranil is a behavioural neuroscientist, composer, education scientist, and sound designer, with a special interest in how our experiences shape our sensory and motor systems. His research focuses on the science and creativity that underpins human performance in all its forms, and uses a variety of behavioural and modelling techniques.
He holds academic appointments at McMaster University, the University of Toronto and the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence. For more details about Ranil, click here.
Cindy Munro
COO & CFO
Cindy is on secondment to Compute Ontario from SHARCNET where she is the Director of Finance and Administration. She has been providing financial management and administrative leadership for over 25 years, primarily in the academic sector and in support of advanced research computing.
She was instrumental in the creation of SHARCNET in 2001 and established many of the financial and administrative structures that still exist today in Ontario’s DRI ecosystem.
Chris Loken
Chief Technology Officer
Chris brings more than two decades of experience in technology and specifically, within high performance computing.
For the past 16 years, he has held progressively senior roles at the University of Toronto, most recently as the Chief Technical Officer at SciNet.
Prior to this role, Chris held visiting academic and research roles at New Mexico State University, University of Missouri and St. Mary’s University, Halifax. He obtained his PhD from Queen’s University in Physics and Astronomy.
Jeff Moon, Director
Data Strategy & Services
Jeff has worked with information, data, and statistics his entire career. Prior to joining Compute Ontario, he was Director, Research Data Management CARL Portage, and subsequently at the Digital Research Alliance of Canada. He also worked as Data Librarian at Queen’s University Libraries in Kingston, Ontario, where he established the Research Data Management Service and served as Academic Director, Research Data Centre.
Jeff has an Honours B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Biology from the University of Waterloo and an M.L.I.S. from McGill University.
Dan Sinai
Executive Project Lead
Dan is an accomplished innovation leader with a strong technology foundation and deep experience spanning research strategy, commercialization, and business development.
He currently works as a freelance innovation executive and consultant, advising organizations at the intersection of advanced technology, research, and market adoption.
Previously, Dan held senior leadership roles at IBM Canada and served for more than a decade as Associate Vice-President, Research at Western University.
Amy Hackney, Director
Strategic Initiatives
Amy brings over a decade of direct research experience as a project lead, published author of peer-reviewed articles, and provider of writing and editing services for universities, colleges and research consortia.
Amy has extensive experience with provincial and federal granting agencies, and within the DRI ecosystem. She worked at SOSCIP before joining CO.
Amy holds a PhD from University of Waterloo in Kinesiology (Neuroscience).
Ron Van Holst, Interim Director
Research Security (P/T)
Ron is a technology thought leader skilled at building relationships across disciplines and sectors. He began his career at Bell Northern Research, designing carrier-grade systems and bringing them successfully to market. At an Ottawa startup, he built a supercomputer for NASA that outperformed the top supercomputer of the day in performance and energy efficiency.
Ron was Compute Ontario’s first executive director and is now a consultant focusing on ech startups. He holds an engineering degree from University of Waterloo.
Janet Crocker, Lead
Communications
Janet is a corporate communications professional who has worked with 40+ organizations to successfully deliver multi-million-dollar transformation initiatives involving technology implementation, organization restructuring and re-branding. Her clients include some of Canada’s largest banks, hospitals and government ministries.
Before joining Compute Ontario, Janet was Director, Strategic Communications at MPAC. She has a degree in journalism from Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (now Toronto Metropolitan University).
Kestrel McNeil
Research Scientist
Kestrel is a health services researcher and mixed methodologist specializing in system performance assessment and wellbeing in academic medicine. Since joining Compute Ontario as a Research Analyst in 2020, she has developed large-scale surveys, focus groups, and environmental scans to inform evidence-based recommendations that support Canadian researchers’ access to DRI tools.
Kestrel holds a PhD in Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour and an MSc in Health Research Methodology from McMaster University.
Scott Delinger
Technical Policy Analyst
Scott is an experienced executive, manager, and Advanced Research Computing professional. A long-time data strategist, he is skilled at turning complex data into clear insights to inform decisions and drive practical actions.
Scott has written successful grant applications for over $10M, published in the chemical and technology fields, and led the ARC team at a Canadian Top 5 university for a decade.
He holds a PhD in Chemistry from Southern Illinois University.
Ann Allan
Training Coordinator
Prior to joining Compute Ontario, Ann worked at Queen’s University Health Sciences Library, where she provided resources and support to help health professionals develop greater information literacy.
Ann holds a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science from Western University and a BSc from Lakehead University. Ann also completed a year in the Faculty of Education program at Lakehead University where she learned pedagogy and gained experience developing hands- on learning programs.
Jocelynn Vieira
Executive Assistant
Jocelynn is an administrative professional with experience working at academic institutions, not-for-profit organizations and in Canadian federal politics.
Jocelynn has an undergraduate degree in Political Science from Carleton University.
Jocelynn spent several years working in federal politics on Parliament Hill before moving to the academic sector as an Administrator at McMaster University and Trent University.