Instructors

She graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 2017 with a dual degree in Computational Biology and Chemistry. She is interested in developing machine learning models for improving current strategies of neoantigen design and prioritization for cancer immunotherapy.

Ishu has a BSc in electrical engineering and has interest in digital signal processing and data science. He has worked in the Wishart Research Group to apply machine learning to various applications in bioinformatics, biology, and metabolomics.

Jacqueline is a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. William Wong’s lab at University of Waterloo’s School of Pharmacy. Her current work focuses on the development of pharmacoeconomic models for health outcomes research. Her PhD thesis entailed a broad-scale comparison of different imputation methods on trait datasets and an investigation of how these methods impact statistical inferences.

Our research focuses on the development of new algorithms, methods and software for analyzing genome sequencing data.

Jasmine received her Bachelor’s degree in Biology, majoring in Molecular Biology and minoring in Marine Biology, from the University of New Brunswick in April 2013. She then pursued her Master’s degree in Epidemiology from the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health from McGill University in May 2016. Her research interest is integrating microbiome and metabolomics data to gain deep functional insights.

Dr. Jennifer Geddes-McAlister is an Associate Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Guelph and the Canada Research Chair in the Proteomics of Fungal Disease in One Health. Her lab applies mass spectrometry-based proteomics and bioinformatics tools to investigate host-pathogen interactions with a focus on One Health approaches to overcoming fungal disease. She was recently awarded an Alumni Achievement Award from the University of Lethbridge, a Research Excellence Award from the University of Guelph and multiple early career researcher awards from the Government of Ontario and scientific societies. She is Director of the Bioinformatics Graduate Programs at the University of Guelph, President of the Canadian National Proteomics Network, co-founder of the Canadian Proteomics and Artificial Intelligence Consortium, and founder of ‘Moms in Proteomics’ an initiative dedicated to recognizing and supporting mothers in STEM.

During Jermiah’s time at Western University, he earned a Masters in Medical Biophysics after completing his Bachelors of Science in Integrated Science with an Honors Specialization in Computer Science. With his passion for interdisciplinary science, the Haibe-Kains lab has provided him with the opportunity to use his toolkit of computational skills to solve problems in healthcare.

His research focuses on statistics and bioinformatics for metabolomics, microarray and next generation sequencing (RNA-seq) data analysis and integration. Some of the tools he developed in the past include MetaboAnalyst for statistical analysis of metabolomics data, MSEA for metabolite set enrichment analysis, MetPA for metabolic pathway analysis, ROCCET for ROC curve based biomarker analysis, and NetworkAnalyst for data integration and network analysis. His general interest is high-throughput omics data analysis using a variety of statistics, machine learning and data visualization technologies.

Dr John Parkinson is a computational biologist whose research interests focus on the impact of microbiota on human health. After completing his PhD at the University of Manchester, studying molecular self-assembly, John spent a year at the University of Manitoba investigating diatom morphogenesis. In 1997, John moved to Edinburgh where he applied computer models to study the evolution of complement control proteins with Dr Paul Barlow. With the emergence of high throughput sequencing, John then led the bioinformatics efforts associated with the parasitic nematode expressed sequence tag project, responsible for the processing and curation of sequence data from 30 species of parasitic nematodes. John was recruited to the Hospital for Sick Children in 2003 and was promoted to Senior Scientist in 2009. He holds cross-appointments in both the departments of Biochemsitry and Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto. Current lab interests center on the role of the microbiome in health and disease as well as the mechanisms that allow  pathogens and parasites to survive and persist in their human hosts.  Key to this research is the integration of computational systems biology analyses with comparative genomics to explore the evolution and operation of microbial pathways driving pathogenesis. Findings from our research programs are helping guide new strategies for therapeutic intervention.

As a Bioinformatics Specialist in the Research and Development team, Jose Hector is involved in maintaining, documenting, and upgrading the RNA-seq pipelines in GenPipes. He also collaborates in several research projects, mostly focusing on transcriptomics, genome assembly, and epigenomics.

Julia is a MSc student in the Department of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto. She is interested in developing and evaluating computational frameworks for biomarker discovery and clinical validation to advance precision oncology. Her current research focuses on identifying new (epi)genomic biomarkers that predict treatment response in breast cancer.