Instructors
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.
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.
Dr. Jüri Reimand is a principal investigator at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) and associate professor at the University of Toronto, Canada. His lab focuses on computational biology, cancer genomics, and development of statistical and machine-learning methods. Areas of interest include interpretation of the non-coding genome and driver mutations, integrative analysis of multi-omics data through pathway and network information, and discovery of molecular biomarkers.
Kelsy is a PhD candidate in the Molecular Cell Biology program at Washington University in St. Louis. She completed her undergraduate degree at Mercer University in 2016, where she earned a B.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. She is interested in developing methods to analyze multiple types of sequencing data in order to better understand regulatory mutations and splicing within cancer, particularly with respect to personalized cancer vaccine design. Currently, she is involved with [2]DGIdb, [3]RegTools, ORegAnno and analysis of several breast cancer clinical cohorts. She is also part of the Precision Medicine Pathway and Cancer Biology Pathway at WashU, which allows to better understand how she can translate genomics and informatics into the clinic more efficiently.
Laura Hug seeks to define microbial diversity and function at contaminated sites using culture-based and culture-independent methods, generating a blueprint of which species are there and which pathways are active.
Her research expands our understanding of the tree of life, while simultaneously developing solutions to address the impacts of human activities on the environment.