People
Kieran received his BSc from the University of Edinburgh in Mathematical Physics followed by a masters in Computational Biology at Cambridge University and a DPhil (PhD) in statistical genomics at Oxford University. He was subsequently a Banting postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia and BC Cancer Agency (2017-2019). He is now Principal Investigator & Scientist at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Molecular Genetics and Statistical Sciences, University of Toronto, and affiliate faculty at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research.
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.
Lauren has an MSc in Biostatistics from the University of Toronto and has previously worked as a Biostatician for two pediatric psychiatric genetics labs at SickKids. She is currently an MSc student in Dr. Anna Goldenberg’s lab. In her work, Lauren is focused on developing and applying statistical machine learning methods primarily in the area of data integration for improved translational discovery in the fields of genetics and genome biology. Lauren has also created custom R programming and data analysis courseware and taught over 200 trainees and scientists in the SickKids research program.
Dr. Lawrence Heisler manages the Genome Sequencing Informatics Analysis team as part of the Genomics Program at OICR. His team develops analysis workflows and production pipelines in support of clinically accredited and research-use only sequencing assays. He holds a graduate degree in Physiology from Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario, and has over 20 years of experience with analysis of genomic data.
Letícia is a PhD candidate at Dalhousie University, investigating the genotype-phenotype evolution of whale acoustics. Her research combines genomics, bioinformatics and bioacoustics to understand how whales adapted their communication to different environments. Letícia is also active in teaching, science communication and outreach. She is the developer and instructor of the undergraduate course “Science Communication for Social Change” at Dalhousie, runs a bilingual science communication page (@leticiamagpali) and the outreach program “Evolution for Everyone”, which offers free training in bioinformatics to equity-seeking students.
Prior to joining OICR in 2006, Dr. Stein played an integral role in many large-scale data initiatives at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Genome Center. He led the development of the first physical clone map of the human genome, and ran the data coordinating centre and the data portal for the SNP Consortium and the HapMap Consortium. Dr. Stein has also led the creation and development of Wormbase, a community model organism database for C. elegans, and Reactome, which is now the largest open community database of biological reactions and pathways.
At OICR, Dr. Stein has led several international cancer data sharing and research initiatives, including the creation and development of the data coordination centre for the International Cancer Genome Consortium and other related projects. He continues to collaborate with national and international partners to create and promote data sharing standards, protocols and implementations.
Lingling Jin received her Ph.D. degree in Computer Science specializing in Bioinformatics from the University of Saskatchewan. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Saskatchewan and an adjunct faculty member at Thompson Rivers University. Her primary research interest is in the computational modelling of genome evolution and various aspects of Comparative Genomics and Phenomics with specific attention on flowering plants. Her research aims to improve our understanding of plant genomes and the consequences of genome evolution.
Dr. Linglong Kong is a Professor in the Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences at the University of Alberta, holding a Canada Research Chair in Statistical Learning and a Canada CIFAR AI Chair. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii), with over 120 peer-reviewed publications in leading journals and conferences such as AOS, JASA, JRSSB, NeurIPS, ICML, and ICLR. Dr. Kong received the 2025 CRM-SSC Prize for outstanding research in Canada. He serves as Associate Editor for several top journals, including JASA and AOAS, and has held leadership roles within the ASA and the Statistical Society of Canada. Dr. Kong’s research interests include high-dimensional and neuroimaging data analysis, statistical machine learning, robust statistics, quantile regression, trustworthy machine learning, and artificial intelligence for smart health.
Dr. Strug is a Professor in the Departments of Statistical Sciences, Computer Science and cross-appointed in Biostatistics at the University of Toronto and is a Senior Scientist in the Program in Genetics and Genome Biology at the Hospital for Sick Children. She is the Lead of the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis (CF) Gene Modifier Study, Co-Lead of the International CF Gene Modifier Consortium, Director of the Ontario Regional Centre of the Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute (CANSSI) and the inaugural Academic Director of the Data Science Initiative (DSI) at the University of Toronto. As a statistical geneticist, her research focuses on the development of novel statistical approaches to analyze and integrate multi-omics data to identify genetic contributors to complex human disease. She has received several honours and awards including the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Genome Data Science.
Dr. Lourdes Peña-Castillo,PhD, is a Professor in the Departments of Computer Science and Biology (jointly appointed) in the Faculty of Science at Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN). She leads the Bioinformatics lab at MUN which is focused on the application of machine learning-based methods to solve microbiology problems. Before coming to MUN, Dr. Peña-Castillo obtained her Ph.D. from the Otto-von-Guericke University in Germany and did a 3-year postdoc in the Banting and Best Department of Medical Research at the University of Toronto.