Our Team

DR. Dora Zalai

MD, Ph.D., C. Psych
Psychologist
Practice in Clinical, Health and Rehabilitation Psychology

Dr. Zalai graduated summa cum laude in medicine and she practiced in pediatric neurology. As a physician, she was fascinated by the brain but over time she became even more captivated by the wonders of the human mind. In her interaction with patients, she increasingly realized that our thoughts, feelings, and behavioural habits have a powerful effect on health and happiness but their potential to aid healing is not always appreciated in medicine. This led to her decision to study psychology and earn a doctoral degree in this field. As a psychologist, she practices in the areas of clinical, health and rehabilitation psychology and has unique knowledge in behavioural sleep medicine.

Dr. Zalai feels privileged to work with clients who are on the journey of recovery and self-growth during and after adversities. She works with clients who have sleep problems, fatigue, stress, low mood, depression, anxiety, panic, chronic worry, obsessive thinking, medical or non-medical trauma-related difficulties, post-concussion syndrome, medical illnesses, or chronic pain.
To help clients who have sleep problems, she uses the best available methods to identify what causes the sleep issue and she develops treatment plans that meet the need of individual clients. She offers evidence-based treatments that are short and effective.

Dr. Zalai held positions at the University Health Network, London Health Sciences, St. Michael’s Hospital, St. Joseph’s Health Care (Hamilton) and a number of sleep clinics throughout Ontario. Her research focused on sleep disorders and fatigue in medical conditions, including chronic hepatitis C infection and mild traumatic brain injury. She has educated clinicians and patient groups about the relationship between sleep, fatigue, mental and physical health in Canada, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia and she developed cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia treatment programs in the community and hospital settings.

DR. Royi Gilad

MD
Specialist in Adult Psychiatry and in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (Israel).

Clinical Fellow in Sleep Medicine and Neuropsychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto and Youthdale Child and Adolescent Sleep Center.

After he graduated from medical school, Dr. Gilad completed post-graduate specialist training in both adult and in child and adolescent psychiatry in Israel. He has knowledge both in psychopharmacology and in various psychotherapeutic techniques and protocols. He was a popular lecturer in Israel and he gave numerous lectures and seminars to health-care providers and other audiences, on subjects of mental disorders, psychotherapy, psychopharmacology, emotional education, and sleep medicine.

As an elected board member of the “Israeli Society for Community Mental Health”, he organized and headed various projects focused on knowledge acquisition and skill training for community mental health and primary care professionals.

From his early years as a high school student, he found the field of sleep and dreaming fascinating, therefore, upon completion of his training in psychiatry, he started a clinical fellowship program in sleep medicine in Toronto.

In his work, Dr. Gilad integrates sleep medicine, psychiatry, psychotherapy, and emotional education, to provide his patients and their families with the best possible healthcare.

DR. Colin Shapiro

BSc, MBBCh, Ph.D., MRCPsych, FRCPC

Dr. Shapiro trained in medicine in South Africa. He also completed two science degrees and at that time he developed his interest in sleep research. He moved to Scotland to do a Ph.D. in sleep and subsequently trained in Psychiatry in Edinburgh. He was headhunted to the Psychiatry Department at the University of Toronto as the youngest full professor in medical school.

Dr. Shapiro founded the British Sleep Society and the International Neuropsychiatry Association. He published the first forensic sleep book with internationally renowned author Sandy McCall Smith. He has published over 300 papers, authored over 20 books and 500 other publications.

His interest includes training others in the sleep field and he has a part-time interest as an art critic. He currently runs the International Sleep Clinic in Parry Sound and the Youthdale Child and Adolescent Sleep Clinic in Toronto.

Naheed Kauser Hossain

MBBS, Managing Director

Naheed Hossain trained in medicine in Bangladesh and subsequently immigrated to Canada in 1993. She entered the sleep field and has worked in various capacities in this area for over 25 years. She managed the Sleep Research Laboratory at the Toronto Western Hospital for over two decades.

For the last twenty years, she has been a coordinator of clinical trials in numerous areas including depression, autism, Tourette’s syndrome, narcolepsy, sleep apnea and insomnia. Her research site has been the highest recruiter internationally in some of the studies. Currently, she is involved in studies related to child depression (age 7-11) and narcolepsy. She is delighted to be a co-director of this multimodal sleep facility.

Nafisa Sayeed

MBBS, M.Phil, MMB

Nafisa Sayeed, an international medical graduate, received the MBBS Degree from Bangladesh Medical College, Bangladesh in 2009 with distinction mark. After completing her internship, she began working as a Consultant Physician for the underprivileged at the renowned NGO in Bangladesh, TMSS Masuda Maternity Hospital. She completed a Masters of Philosophy (M.Phil) in Nuclear Medicine and Ultrasound from the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU), Bangladesh in 2015. Her areas of expertise include clinical research, maternal and child health, ultrasound scanning, scintigraphy, and laboratory techniques. She earned distinctions when she achieved her second master’s degree in medical biotechnology (MMB) from the University of Windsor, Canada in 2021. She has 7 years of clinical research experience with four publications in national and international journals (https://a1office.co/solutions/shared/view?fileKey=3.vol10-issue5-2022-MS-15902-short-comm-5cd3bdb48708fe09e3131eacbd3606bb.pdf)

She attended NCCN International Conference in New York, 2014. She also participated different health training programs in United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Singapore and Thailand.

Nafisa likes to travel, cook, and read journals in her free time. She is thrilled to be a part of Sleep on the Bay team, where she assists the coordination of clinical research activities and provides support, information updates and ongoing collaboration to ensure the success of research studies.

Affan Danish

BSc

Affan Danish recently graduated from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Science degree in Human Biology, Psychology and Neuroscience. He joined the Sleep and Alertness Clinic in 2012 as a student volunteer.

Along with providing administrative support, he assisted with sleep medicine research projects through comprehensive data collection and analysis. He is currently a Laboratory Technician in the Melatonin Assessment Laboratory, providing testing for patients and completing the laboratory component for obtaining final melatonin results.

He also works at Public Health Ontario in the Front-End Processing department, assisting with the administrative processing of large-scale samples for testing.

Mahabuba Ahmed

MBBS

Mahabuba (Luna) completed her medical degree in Bangladesh and subsequently specialized in Gynecology and obstetrics. She has passion for research and has worked as clinical fellow in the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh, where she conducted research in clinical trials testing new medications and vaccines. At Sleep on the Bay, she conducts and analyses dim light melatonin onset (DLMO) tests for clinical and research purposes.