Experts
Dr. William Hsiao is a professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) at Simon Fraser University and the principal investigator of the Center for Infectious Disease Genomics and One Health. Prior to joining FHS, he was the chief bioinformatician and a senior scientist at the BC Centre for Disease Control Public Health Laboratory (BCCDC PHL) and a clinical associate professor at the University of British Columbia. He is currently an affiliated scientist at the BCCDC PHL and at Canada’s Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre, and a genomic consultant with the BC Ministry of Agriculture Animal Health Centre. Dr. Hsiao’s research experience and focus includes the analysis of microbial genomics and metagenomics; data science; knowledge engineering; public health management, sharing, and harmonization; as well as infectious diseases and other One Health problems.
I am a computational biologist with a primary focus on the analysis of genomics data related to transcription and gene regulation. My background includes undergraduate studies in mathematics and cell biology, graduate studies in cellular biology and cancer prevention and post-doctoral training in bioinformatics. My lab created the JASPAR database of transcription factor binding profiles and methods for the identification of cis-regulatory regions in the human genome. Being based at BC Children’s Hospital and the Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics, a second research focus has emerged at the interface between researchers, clinicians and patients arising from the use of whole genome sequencing for the diagnosis of genetic disorders. Our ongoing work focuses on the pursuit of equity for Indigenous peoples through the Silent Genomes Project. Working with clinical partners, my lab maintains IEMbase, an international knowledgebase related to inborn errors in metabolism.
My expertise is in Bioinformatics and Machine Learning. My current research focuses on multi-omics analysis which provides novel information on the mechanisms of the biological process and cell states in disease development. We develop computational tools for complex and high-dimensional data including genome-wide population data, RNA-seq, and tandem mass spectra. I’m particularly interested in applying deep learning and AI to plants to advance digital agriculture.
I obtained a PhD degree in Computer Science and Computational Biology at University of Toronto in 2014. Prior to joining McGill, I was a postdoctoral associate at Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT (2015-2018). My research is focused on developing interpretable probabilistic learning models and deep learning models to model genetic, epigenetic, electronic health record, and single-cell genomic data.
Zhaolei Zhang is a Professor in the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research and Department of Molecular Genetics, University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine. He also holds cross-appointment in the Department of Computer Science. His primary research interests are gene regulation, noncoding RNAs, and microRNAs, and their roles in human diseases such as cancer He is also interested in the study of macromolecule and small molecule interactions.