Instructors

Emma Griffiths is a research associate at the Centre for Infectious Disease Genomics and One Health (CIDGOH) in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. Her work focuses on developing and implementing ontologies and data standards for public health and food safety genomics to help improve data harmonization and integration. She is a member of the Standards Council of Canada and leads the Public Health Alliance for Genomic Epidemiology (PHA4GE) Data Structures Working Group.

Dr. Brinkman is developing bioinformatic resources to better track infectious diseases using genomic data, and improve prediction of new vaccine/drug targets. Her primary aim is to develop more sustainable, integrated approaches for infectious disease control, however she is also applying her methods to aid allergy and environmental research.

I joined BCCDC Public Health Microbiology & Reference Laboratory in September 2011 as the lead bioinformatician. My goal is to apply microbial genomics and bioinformatics in public health setting to improve health care. I completed my PhD at Simon Fraser University in the laboratory of Dr. Fiona Brinkman and a post-doctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Claire Fraser-Liggett at the Institute for Genome Sciences, University of Maryland School of Medicine. During my training, I focused on whole genome sequence analysis and comparative genomics. I also have published and continue to work in the new field of metagenomics. Currently, my research focus on improving methodologies for conducting infectious disease surveillance and outbreak investigations by using next-generation sequencing technology and developing robust bioinformatics analysis platform.

Dr. Hirst’s research focuses on understanding epigenetic dysfunction in cancer and his laboratory develops experimental and computational tools to characterize normal and transformed cell types down to the single cell level. He applies these tools to explore the epigenomic states of normal and transformed cell types to discover and exploit therapeutic vulnerabilities.