Instructors
Dr Goldenberg is a Senior Scientist in Genetics and Genome Biology program at SickKids Research Institute, recently appointed as the first Varma Family Chair in Biomedical Informatics and Artificial Intelligence. She is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, faculty member and an Associate Research Director, Health at Vector Institute and a fellow at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), Child and Brain Development group. Dr Goldenberg trained in machine learning at Carnegie Mellon University, with a post-doctoral focus in computational biology and medicine. The current focus of her lab is on developing machine learning methods that capture heterogeneity and identify disease mechanisms in complex human diseases as well as developing risk prediction and early warning clinical systems. Dr Goldenberg is a recipient of the Early Researcher Award from the Ministry of Research and Innovation and a Canada Research Chair in Computational Medicine. She is strongly committed to creating responsible AI to benefit patients across a variety of conditions.
Arnaud Droit is a full professor in bioinformatics in the Faculty of Medicine of Laval University. He is the director of the bioinformatics and proteomics platforms of the Research Center of the CHU de Québec – Université Laval. His laboratory focuses on the development of tools dedicated to the analysis of omics-type massive data, including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics. His work provides a better understanding of the complex biological mechanisms of different diseases or biological phenomena. His team develops various approaches to identify multi-omics signatures using multivariate-driven methods such as machine learning and knowledge-based methods such as interaction networks.
Ashleigh is a postdoctoral fellow working in the Miller Lab at the Michael Smith Laboratories, University of British Columbia. Her work aims to understand how neural stem cells of the ventricular-subventricular zone can be activated and recruited for brain repair and remyelination, with a particular interest in the influence of the environment in this process. Ashleigh uses single cell RNA-sequencing and single-cell spatial transcriptomics (including 10X Xenium), combined with in vivo murine models, to address these questions. Her work is currently funded by an endMS fellowship from the MS Society of Canada.
Dr. Benjamin Haibe-Kains is a Senior Scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre (PM), University Health Network, and Professor in the Medical Biophysics Department of the University of Toronto. Dr. Haibe-Kains earned his PhD in Bioinformatics 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 carcinogenesis. Dr. Haibe-Kains’ team analyzes large-scale radiological and (pharmaco)genomic datasets to develop new prognostic and predictive models to improve cancer care.
Dr. Bernard Lam holds a graduate degree in Plant Molecular Biology from the University of Toronto and completed a Postdoctoral appointment at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. With over 13 years of experience as a Senior Research Scientist, he specialized in product and assay development for molecular biology and genomics applications within an ISO13485 and ISO15189-accredited company. In his current role as Associate Director of the Translational Genomics Laboratory, Dr. Lam oversees the day-to-day operations of the high-throughput next generation sequencing laboratory in the Genomics program of OICR.
University of Munich School of Medicine (1978-1985); Max-Planck Institute for Biochemistry (1985-1994); Gene Center of the University of Munich (1995-2001); University of Toronto (since 2001). I wish to understand complexity in adaptive systems. Complexity arises from the context dependent behaviour of system components, and in biochemistry we observe it in the hierarchies of structure formation, and the generation of function, across molecular, cellular and organismal scales. Recent scholarly work (since 2017, with Yi CHEN) has focussed on complexity in human relationality, ethics and aesthetics. Most recently (2022) I have founded the “Sentient Syllabus Project” as an international, public-good collaborative to address how academia can re-imagine itself in the face of our new wave of Artificial Intelligence capabilities. My teaching focuses on inquiry.
Caryn Geady is a graduate researcher specializing in quantitative imaging and data science. With a Bachelor’s degree in Physics (Medical Physics and Imaging) from Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) and a Master’s degree in Medical Biophysics from the University of Toronto (UofT), she brings a strong foundation in both theoretical and practical aspects of medical imaging. Caryn is passionate about teaching, having helped launch Supported Learning Groups at TMU to aid students in mastering challenging course concepts. Currently pursuing a Ph.D. at UofT, her research focuses on machine learning techniques for assessing treatment response in advanced cancers.
Ce Zhang is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences at the University of Alberta, majoring in Statistics. He is co-supervised by Prof. Linglong Kong and Prof. Bei Jiang. His research focuses on constructing efficient prediction bands, with particular interests in differential privacy, transfer learning and subsampling methods.
My research involves developing, improving and applying statistical methods for genetic, genomic and high dimensional data. My over 200 publications include both theoretical developments and applied collaborative projects, collectively cited over 18,000 times. I am Senior Investigator at the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research (www.ladydavis.ca). At McGill University, I hold a James McGill Professorship, I am co-Director of the Ludmer Centre for Neuroinformatics and Mental Health (ludmercentre.ca), and also the inaugural and current Graduate Program Director of the interdisciplinary PhD in Quantitative Life Sciences (www.mcgill.ca/qls). I am a former president of the International Genetic Epidemiology Society (www.geneticepi.org) and received their Leadership Award in 2022.
Chaitra is a computational biologist with experience in software development. During her PhD, she applied mathematical modelling, network analysis and multi-omics integration to study complex diseases. She has contributed to open-source toolboxes (openCOBRA) and developed softwares (EFMviz & ComMet) to analyse genome-scale metabolic models. She currently works in the Bader lab’s MODiL team (Multi Omics Data Integration and Analysis) and with groups at PMCC, where she develops pipelines to analyse various omics data types and discover new drug targets in cancer.