Platform Leadership
Our leadership team brings together expertise from diverse voices, career stages and complementary skill sets to lead our shared pursuit of a world-class bioinformatics skill development ecosystem.
Management Team
Platform Training Manager, CBH
Ontario Institute for Cancer Research
Program Manager, CBW
Regional Coordinators
BC Regional Coordinator
bc@bioinformatics.ca
Alberta Co-Regional Coordinator
Alberta Co-Regional Coordinator
Prairies Regional Coordinator
Ontario Regional Coordinator
Canelle Schuhler-Husson
Atlantic Regional Coordinator
Platform Advisory Committee
The Canadian Bioinformatics Hub is overseen by an expert Platform Advisory Committee (PAC), which is responsible for the success and sustainability of the Hub and its overall governance.
Paul Pavlidis, PhD (Chair)
Professor of Psychiatry
Department of Psychiatry
University of British Columbia
Melissa Burke, PhD
Training Manager
Australian BioCommons
Marta Lloret Linares, PhD
Data Science Learning Associate Director
AstraZeneca
Alison Symington, PhD
Strategic Life Science Consultant
Life Sciences Ontario
Verena Ras, PhD
Bioinformatics Program Manager
University of Cape Town
Pierre-Étienne Jacques, PhD
Professor
Department of Biology Bioinformatics
Universté de Sherbrooke
Geert van Geest, PhD
Bioinformatician and Trainer
Universität Bern and Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics
Mohamed Helmy, PhD
Adjunct Professor
Veterinary Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO)
University of Saskatchewan
Rebecca Tamarchak, PhD
Head of Strategy, Governance and Partnerships
Ontario Institute of Cancer Research
IDEA Committee
The Canadian Bioinformatics Hub is committed to fostering Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA) across all its activities. Our IDEA Committee provides expert guidance on the development and implementation of these principles throughout the platform.
Julie Hussin, PhD (Chair)
Associate Professor
Department of Biochemistry
Université de Montréal
David Wishart, PhD
Distinguished University Professor
Faculty of Science
University of Alberta
Jude Kong, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Mathematics
University of Toronto
Kaetlyn Philips, MSc
PhD Student
University of Calgary
Mahadeo Sukhai, PhD
Director of Research and Chief Inclusion & Accessibility Officer
Canadian National Institute for the Blind
Wyeth W. Wasserman, PhD
Professor
Department of Medical Genetics
University of British Columbia
Community Outreach Committee
The Community Outreach Committee (COC) leads the Canadian Bioinformatics Hub’s portfolio of community activities which extend learning beyond the classroom, through networking, mentorship and professional development to strengthen our community across Canada.
William Hsiao, PhD (Chair)
Associate Professor, MSHRBC Scholar
Faculty of Health Sciences
Simon Fraser University
Arvind Mer, PhD
Assistant Professor
Faculty of Medicine
University of Ottawa
Testimony Olumade, MSc
PhD Student
Department of Immunology
University of Manitoba
Robin Haw, PhD
Program Manager
Genome Informatics and Computational Biology
Ontario Institute for Cancer Research
Education Advisory Committee
The Education Advisory Committee (EAC) provides expert advice and leadership for the training portfolio of the Canadian Bioinformatics Hub, verifying that programs address identified gaps and align with regional and sector-specific training needs.
Guillaume Bourque, PhD (Chair)
Professor
Department of Human Genetics
McGill University
Finlay McGuire, PhD
Assistant Professor
Faculty of Computer Science
Dalhousie University
Rihannon Cameron
PhD Student
Simon Fraser University
Karen Cranston, PhD
Computational Biologist, Staff Scientist
University Health Network
Partnerships Committee
The Partnerships Committee (PC) cultivates and sustains relationships with key stakeholders to expand the Hub’s training and community portfolios, its impact and to drive long-term sustainability.
Shraddha Pai, PhD (Chair)
Early-Career Investigator
Ontario Institute for Cancer Research
Dan Sinai
President and CEO
Episign Inc.
Shenmiao (Ivy) Li
PhD Student
McGill University
Abdoulaye Baniré Diallo, PhD
Professor
Université du Québec à Montréal
Jennifer Geddes-McAllister
Associate Professor, Canada Research Chair
Director, Bioinformatics Graduate Program
University of Guelph
CBW Educational Advisory Committee 2024
Founder and Retired Scientific Director
B.F. Francis Ouellette is currently consulting in bioinformatics. Francis co-founded the Canadian Bioinformatics Workshops (CBW) and the Scientific Director of bioinformatics.ca from 1998 to 2022. His research interests included biological sequence analysis, genome annotation and database curation. Francis has dedicated his career to Open Science: the data it generates, how bioinformatics is thought and the publications that report them throughout his career and through his work with the CBW and the many scientific advisory and editorial boards he serves on.
Biologist-Bioinformatician
Stefanie Butland is a biologist-bioinformatician, knowledge-sharer, people-connector and community builder who is motivated by enabling great research. Throughout her career she has been bringing people together at the interfaces of the life sciences, medicine and computational sciences. She is the Community Manager for the rOpenSci Project that aims to transform science by working creatively and proactively to build tools for and to promote data literacy, open science and reproducible research.
Associate Director, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research
Michelle Brazas is the Associate Director for Adaptive Oncology at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR), a program encompassing a wide variety of projects from imaging, informatics, genomics and diagnostic development. Previously, she was a Program Manager for bioinformatics.ca, and through ISCB, GOBLET and other endeavours has always been the strongest supporter of open bioinformatics training worldwide.
Biologist and Computer Scientist, Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics
Facilitating learning, lasting partnerships, knowledge management, training and education in scientific environments. Patricia M. Palagi is a biologist and computer scientist by training. In 1997 she joined the Molecular Imaging and Bioinformatics Laboratory in Geneva, one of the 5 pillar laboratories of what would become the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics one year later. From then on, she coordinated and managed several MSc programs related to bioinformatics, in Geneva and Lausanne. Today she leads the SIB Training Group and my team coordinates training activities within the institute, with Swiss and international partners.
Scientific Affiliate, Princess Margaret Cancer Centreu
Dr. Voisin is currently a scientific affiliate at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto in the lab of Dr. Aaron Schimmer. As a bioinformatician, she is applying data analysis using various software and pipelines to high throughput genomics data to answer diverse biological questions. Previously, she worked in Dr. Gary Bader’s lab to apply pathway and network analysis using popular tools like GSEA and visualization using Cytoscape to transcriptomics data. She worked extensively on characterizing the gene signatures of different types of leukemias and other cancer types.
Senior Scientist, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre (PM), University Health Network
Professor, Medical Biophysics Department, University of Toronto
Dr. Haibe-Kains earned his PhD in Bionformatics at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium). Supported by a Fulbright Award, he did his postdoctoral fellowship at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard School of Public Health (USA). He is now the Canada Research Chair in Computational Pharmacogenomics and the Scientific Director of the Cancer Digital Intelligence Program at PM. Dr. Haibe-Kains’ research focuses on the integration of high-throughput data from various sources to simultaneously analyze multiple facets of cancer progress and therapy response using machine learning and artificial intelligence methods. Dr. Haibe-Kains’ team analyzes large-scale radiological and (pharmaco)genomic datasets to develop new prognostic and predictive models to improve cancer care.
Manager, Genome Alberta
Research Associate, University of Manitoba / Executive Officer, Cancer Care Manitoba Bioinformatics Core
Regional Coordinator – Prairies, Canadian Bioinformatics Hub
Co-Director/Founder – BioNet Prairie
Eric is an experienced project manager with background training in genetics and molecular biology through a combination of training at the University of New Brunswick and Memorial University of Newfoundland. With interest in building capacity in bioinformatics and computational biology across the prairie provinces, Eric is affiliated with Genome Canada and the University of Manitoba to build toward these activities. His professional goals are to aid in the building and distribution of accessible training and upskilling resources in these fields that may be accessed across Canada to support the growing data science needs occurring across diverse sectors.
Associate Professor in Bioinformatics, Faculty of Computer Science, Dalhousie University
Rob (or “Dr. Robert Beiko”, if you want to be all formal about it) is an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Bioinformatics in the Faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie University. Before coming to Dal in 2006, he was a postdoc in the lab of Mark Ragan at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. And before that, he completed a PhD in Biology at the University of Ottawa (1998-2003). Although all of his formal training was in biology, an interest in machine-learning approaches, algorithms for identifying important evolutionary events, and visualization of biological data have ultimately led him to put down stakes in Computer Science and collaborate with some of the best in the business here.
Advisor, Sector Innovation & Programs, Ontario Genomics