People

Dr. Marra has demonstrated the pivotal role that genomics can play in human health and disease research, including through contributions to the Human Genome Project, leading the sequencing of the SARS coronavirus genome and first proof-of-concept study demonstrating the effective use of whole genome analyses in personalized cancer medicine. His research has uncovered new cancer mutations, candidate biomarkers and therapeutic targets, and has been instrumental in demonstrating the functional interplay between the cancer genome and epigenome.

Pr. Brunet qualified as a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and later completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge under a prestigious Gates Cambridge scholarship. She did her postdoc in Biochemistry and Functional Genomics at the University of Sherbrooke, before establishing her own research group at the University of Sherbrooke in 2021. With collaborator Pr Roucou, she develops and manages the OpenProt resource, the first proteogenomics resource endorsing a polycistronic annotation of eukaryotic genomes. Beyond OpenProt, her research focuses on non-annotated coding sequences in our genomes, notably within pseudogenes. She is part of the international Ribo-seq ORF consortium. She uses both fundamental and computational research methods to better explore biological data and understand human diseases. She holds a research chair in Multi-omics and Deep Learning, and a FRQS Junior 1 career grant recognizing her leadership at the intersection of health sciences and artificial intelligence.

Marie-Pierre Dubé has been the director of the Beaulieu-Saucier Pharmacogenomics Centre at the Montreal Heart Institute since 2011 and a full professor at the University of Montreal since 2005. She holds the Canada Research Chair in Data Analysis for Precision Medicine and has received multiple awards and career grants. Over the years, she has led several large-scale research projects funded by governmental agencies. As the author of over 200 scientific articles, her research in pharmacogenomics has notably led to the creation of the pharmaceutical company DalCor. Her research interests include studying the impact of sex, gender, and temperature extremes on health and drug response, particularly in the context of cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.

He received a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Missouri-Columbia, USA, in 2002, where he studied the structure and dynamics of oncoviral proteins with high-resolution NMR methods. Mark conducted his post-doctoral research of protein structural biology in University of Michigan, USA, and then joined Dr. Wishart’s group at University of Alberta, Canada, to work on data analysis and software development in the fields of metabolomics, NMR, and protein structure and dynamics.

Mark Phillips works in comparative privacy and data protection law, particularly where it intersects with health data sharing. His academic background is in law and computer science, and he is a practicing member of the Quebec Bar Association. He works at the Centre of Genomics and Policy at McGill University as an Academic Associate, and is the co-chair of the Data Protection Task Team of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health’s Research and Ethics Work Stream. His comparative legal research focuses on topics including cloud computing, the identifiability of personal data, bioinformatics, and open data.

Dr. Hirst’s research aims to further our understanding of the role of epigenetic dysfunction in cancer initiation and progression and to translate this knowledge into improved health outcomes for Canadians. International efforts to characterize genetic lesions in cancer genomes have revealed recurrent mutations in epigenetic modifiers and in some cases these can represent the sole driver. Understanding the functional implications of these mutations, their contribution to abnormal cellular differentiation and how emerging epigenetic therapeutics may counteract their effects represent the next critical steps towards translating this knowledge. In this context, Dr. Hirst is studying cancers that harbor highly recurrent gain and loss of function mutations to epigenetic modifiers, such as acute myeloid leukemia, synovial sarcoma, malignant rhabdoid tumor. His research involves the development and application of molecular and computational tools to measure epigenetic features and drive new insights into normal and pathogenic epigenetic regulatory control.

Dr. Strömvik leads a bioinformatics research group focusing on complex polyploid genomes of plants (e.g. arctic and temperate Oxytropis sp., and potato wild relatives). She completed a Ph.D. in Crop Sciences (plant molecular genetics of soybean) at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA), and a B.A. in Theoretical Philosophy as well as a M.Sc. in Biology (tissue culture and transformation in Picea abies) at Stockholm University (Sweden). She carried out postdoctoral studies in Bioinformatics and Computational Genomics at University of Minnesota, Minneapolis (USA) working on genomics projects in soybean, Medicago truncatula and loblolly pine. In 2003 she joined McGill’s Department of Plant Science where she pioneered the development of university-wide graduate bioinformatics programs and courses. She serves on national and international grant panels, as Associate Editor for several journals, and as Chair of the Department of Plant Science since 2015.

Dr. Mary-Ellen Harper’s research focuses on mitochondrial energetics and metabolomics – and specifically the mechanisms that impact the efficiency of energy transduction pathways in mitochondria. The research has implications for the amounts of energy ‘captured’ as ATP, and stored in cells (e.g., as lipid or glycogen), as well as for the amounts of energy released as heat. These mechanisms dictating the efficiency of energy conversion also affect oxidative stress and cell signaling. Altogether these processes in mitochondria have repercussions for metabolic health and many diseases. Experimental approaches span from molecular in vitro studies, to mouse models, and to integrative translational studies in patient populations. She and her group have published over 200 peer-reviewed papers cited over 19,300 times. Dr. Harper is the Director of the Ottawa Institute of Systems Biology (https://med.uottawa.ca/oisb/), and is also the Director of the NSERC-funded Metabolomics Advanced Training and International Exchange (MATRIX) graduate training program, based at Universities of Ottawa, McGill and Montréal http://www.matrixmetabolomics.ca. A strong proponent for the teaching and training of the next generations of scientists, she has supervised 30 HBSc, 23 MSc and 14 PhD students, as well as 12 Postdoctoral Fellows. Research is currently funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC); the National Research Council of Canada, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, and Mitacs. Dr. Harper holds a University Research Chair in Mitochondrial Bioenergetics, and was recently awarded the Diabetes Canada Lifetime Achievement Award.

As a Bioinformatics manager of the TechDev unit, Mathieu ensures the integration and the support of new genomics technologies in the platform and he leads the software development. Prior to joining C3G, Mathieu was the team leader of the Bioinformatics service unit at Genome Quebec. He holds a PhD in Statistical Genetics from University Paris-Sud XI and a Master degree in Genetics from University Pierre-et-Marie-Currie (Paris VI).

Matt is a member of the Animal and Poultry Science department at the University of Saskatchewan. His PhD was in Veterinary Microbiology with Dr. Janet Hill (WCVM-UofS) and MSc was in Biology with Dr. William Crosby (UWindsor). Matt has had a diverse background working on microbiome, bioinformatics and genomics projects that cover all domains of life.

Prof. Shafer previously studied the molecular mechanisms of lineage specification and stem cell division in prostate and urogenital systems (MSc Western University, PhD McGill University). During his postdoc, he transitioned into studying the genomics and evolution of brains and behaviour. At Harvard University, he developed techniques to perform comparative neurobiology with single-cell RNA-sequencing and discovered mechanisms driving cellular diversity across species in the vertebrate brain. He then moved to the University of Basel where he began work on the evolution of sleep in African Rift Lake cichlid fishes. Max is now an assistant Professor in the Department of Cell & Systems Biology at the University of Toronto.

Maxwell Libbrecht is an Assistant Professor at the School of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University. His research focuses on developing machine learning methods applied to high-throughput genomics data sets. He received his PhD in 2016 from the Computer Science and Engineering department at University of Washington, advised by Bill Noble and Jeff Bilmes, and his undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Stanford University, advised by Serafim Batzoglou. He is a 2021 Michael Smith Foundation Scholar. He was the first author of a paper named one of ISCB’s Top 10 Regulatory and Systems Genomics papers of 2015.