Dr. Ian Chen
Managing Director, Founder & Physician-in-Chief (CMC Clinic - California)
Ian is an adolescent medicine expert and a founder of CMC. He received his engineering degree from Queen’s University, his medical degree from Des Moines University in Iowa and completed his paediatrics residency at Cleveland Clinic, along with his adolescent medicine fellowship and adolescent transplant medicine fellowship at Toronto’s SickKids Hospital and University of Toronto.
Ian has a long history of being an advocate in health policy and is a former Board member of Havergal College, in Toronto. He served on the national board of the largest medical student organization in the U.S. that advocated for various national and international healthcare and medical education issues, including better access to healthcare, transparency and collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry and the wellness of medical trainees. Ian also was an active leader in advancing the rollout of a comprehensive electronic medical system for the inpatient setting at Cleveland Clinic Children’s Hospital.
Ian has mentored not only medical trainees studying to be physicians, paediatricians, osteopathic physicians, family physicians, nurse practitioners and adolescent medicine specialists, he has also mentored technology and science students in translating the latest technology to the medical setting in order to promote better health treatment and outcomes.
When Ian was a Staff Physician at SickKids along with being the only adolescent transplant paediatrician globally as well as the sole osteopathic medical specialist in Ontario, he recognized that many of the health challenges facing young people today require innovative and paradigm-shifting changes. He developed a community adolescent medicine program at Kindercare in midtown Toronto to bring a rare specialty closer to young people who needed the support. The demand for the program quickly outpaced the supply of services. Dr. Chen realised that technology needs to be incorporated to provide more effective and accessible solutions. He founded CMC and took on more of a managerial role to direct these efforts. While CMC Canada is focused on non-medical care to optimise brain performance, Dr. Chen maintains a medical clinic for youth and young adults and athletes available to residents of California.
While there are technology companies emerging today that aim to provide support for mental health for young people, there is no centre today with the medical, research and engineering expertise specific to this population. CMC is the solution developed by Dr. Chen to be the leading all-in-one mental health institution. Its goal is to not only provide proven state-of-the-art mental health treatment, but use outcome metrics in order to ensure improvement. It will also adopt safe and secure technology to make our treatment accessible to the ever-increasing demand of young people struggling with mental health challenges, today.
Ian’s research combines psychology, medicine, neuroscience and mathematical modelling together in order to understand the development of the adolescent brain and to help young people become more resilient. As a researcher in brain maturation using brain imaging technologies, Ian often provides educational events in the community, in order to facilitate discussions, especially in this day and age, regarding the impact of technology on the developing brain and its social ramifications.
Dr. Chen is currently providing concussion analytics and management services to at-risk athletes, in addition to performance consulting services for individuals, families, athletes, public agencies, corporations and institutions in order to assist in personal, professional and many other facets. He continues to research brain maturation using qEEG and brain imaging techniques as part of the research and development at the new mental health institution that he is heading, CMC. In addition, Dr. Chen is Physician-in-Chief for CMC Clinic - California, the sole CMC department that is providing traditional medical care to youth and young adults as well as athletes in California.
Nik Dilberović
Chief of Staff & Founder
Nik grew up witnessing young people, some close to him, struggling with mental health challenges. He saw how difficult it was for many to access mental healthcare. Many had to go to several clinics or hospitals before finding effective treatment support and some even ended up being turned away. Nik wanted to understand the problem that seemed to be surrounding everyone, everyday. Why are there so many young people unable to go to school, having panic attacks, depression, anger outbursts, obsessively attached to their video game consoles and phones?
Nik became a champion of mental health awareness and advocacy at his alma mater, Crescent School, in Toronto. He realised that a new system of mental healthcare is needed to tackle this increasingly prevalent health challenge. His journey led him to Dr. Chen’s research and clinic. Together, Nik worked closely with Ian on mentoring health and technology students to create solutions for this global challenge.
Nik decided to redirect his studies in International Relations at the University of Toronto’s Trinity College, in order to work with Dr. Chen full-time to fulfill CMC’s mission. He has a wide network of peers with technology and mental health interests that provides an invaluable young adults’ perspective. He also brings in leadership experience in a number of business, science and health student groups at Crescent and what he’s learned from Trinity.
Nik has also mentored and overseen the development and business teams that created CMC’s app prototype along with the initial R&D team. Nik has been integral to the founding of CMC and serves as the second in command to the Managing Director, Dr. Ian Chen, as the Chief of Staff and a founder of CMC. His enthusiasm, tenacity and perspective are pertinent to CMC’s mission.
Justen Evars
Chief Engineer & Founder
Justen is the Chief Engineer of CMC who is responsible for all the technological and R&D efforts. He obtained a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Queen's University. His research interest focuses on dynamic process modeling as well as novel ways to improve energy capture and redistribution.
Justen was active in soccer until high school where he started playing lacrosse. He also snowboarded, skateboarded and mountain biked at various points in his life. All of these sports have risk of head injury, some much greater than others. He has witnessed the effects of mild to severe concussions in others, as well as the lasting mental health impacts it had on them.
Upon investigation, he realised that the current standards of diagnosis and/or treatment for concussion or mild traumatic brain injury rely heavily on subjective metrics. He is interested in using readily available technology to improve this. Similarly, he is interested in implementing the same technology for mental health diagnosis and treatment. He aims to help improve the current understanding linking the changes in the brain to mental health manifestations.
He is currently deploying a leading-edge concussion screening protocol that will be available for athletes in Canada and patients of CMC Virtual Brain Clinic in California. This protocol was developed using an industry-first analytical methodology combining music theory and statistical modeling, called Brain Music. Brain music can not only be used for concussion screening, but can also be adapted to provide personalised neurofeedback performance enhancement for young people and athletes.
