Tushar Shakya This year's recipient of the EOC CCHL's Student Award of Excellence is Tushar Shakya. Tushar is a recent graduate from the MHA program at the Telfer School of Management. He was recognized for this award based on his work during his MHA residency at The Ottawa Hospital where, under the guidance of Mike Tierney (The Ottawa Hospital), Professor Wojtek Michalowski and Professor Pavel Andreev, he conducted a pilot study on the inter-rater agreement in emergency department (ED) triage to inform on current practices carried out during ED triage.

Tushar holds a PhD from the Faculty of Health Sciences at McMaster University, where he studied the mechanisms of antibiotic resistance in infectious diseases, and published 8 research articles. In parallel to his academic work, Tushar has also pursued his interests in business by starting his own event planning company, while taking on corporate operations roles for several large logistics companies. Tushar decided to blend his joint passions in business and healthcare when he accepted a role as a Business Development Director with a research funding agency, a position which ultimately led him to purse his MHA at the Telfer School of Management. His success during this program was recognized by induction into the Beta Gamma Sigma honours society and several scholarships, including the prestigious Michel Lalonde Award for Leadership.