Sylvana Côté, PhD, is a full professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Montreal and a researcher at CHU Sainte-Justine. She heads the Observatory for Children’s Education and Health and the Research Group on Children's Psychosocial Maladjustment. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She has received national and international awards and honours, including a senior fellowship from the Fonds de recherche du Québec, Research Chairs in the Netherlands (Utrecht University) and France (Idex Chair, University of Bordeaux), and a Marie Curie International Fellowship. She has won the Association canadienne-française pour l'avancement des sciences (ACFAS) award for the Quebec-France cooperation.

She studies life trajectories, beginning in utero, leading to psychosocial and school adjustment in children and adolescents. She adopts a lifespan perspective to study the associations between early family adversity (e.g., socioeconomic disadvantaged, parental mental health problems) and poor child outcomes, and to test the efficacy of population-based prevention programs. Her work focusses on the prevention of 3 overlapping problems: psychosocial maladjustment, mental health problems, and academic difficulties. She has documented the conditions under which early childcare and education can foster children’s healthy development and reduce social disparities; and identified programs to improve the quality of childcare services offered to disadvantaged populations. Her research was published in more than 200 peer-reviewed papers (H-index of 54).