People
Our research traverses from genomes to small molecules integrating systems, structural and computational pharmacology as well as chemo- and bioinformatics. Our work is divided into four interconnected but independent axes within which we combine the development and use of innovative computational methods with experimentally validation. Namely: 1. The reconstruction and simulation of metabolic networks; 2. The detection of binding-site structural similarities; 3. Simulation of dynamic aspects of protein function; and 4. The development of docking algorithms.
Rob (or “Dr. Robert Beiko”, if you want to be all formal about it) is an Associate Professor in Bioinformatics in the Faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie University. Before coming to Dal in 2006, he was a postdoc in the lab of Mark Ragan at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. And before that, he completed a PhD in Biology at the University of Ottawa (1998-2003). Although all of his formal training was in biology, an interest in machine-learning approaches, algorithms for identifying important evolutionary events, and visualization of biological data have ultimately led him to put down stakes in Computer Science and collaborate with some of the best in the business here.
After completing a postdoctoral position in Australia, Rob joins the team as a Bioinformatics consultant specializing in fungal/plant genetics and developing omics resources, strategies, and infrastructure for laboratories working with non-model organisms. He has more than a decade of experience working in genomics, and holds a PhD in bioinformatics from Curtin University.
Robin is a microbiologist with experience in bioinformatics, curation and outreach. Dr. Haw has a PhD in genetics and was a senior curator at Biomolecular Interaction Network Database (BIND) and managing curator at Science Signaling’s Signal Transduction Knowledge Environment (STKE). He has been responsible for coordinating outreach, Reactome presentations and training at workshops and conferences.
Roger C. Levesque is professor of Microbiology at Université Laval. He obtained a B.Sc. in Biology at the Univ. of Moncton, M.Sc. in microbiology at the Univ. de Montréal and PhD in microbiology at Univ. Laval. His postdoctoral was at Harvard with George Jacoby in bacterial genetics, at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories in genetics, genomics and mutagenesis with Michael Smith (Nobel 1993) at UBC. He is the founder of the Institut de biologie intégrative et des systèmes (IBIS) at Univ. Laval, and was director 2009-2016. He is the scientific director of the FRQS Respiratory Health Network. He was awarded several FRSQ scholarships and Scholar of Exceptional Merit. He received the Robbie Award from CF Canada, the Univ. of Moncton Senior Science Award, an investigator award from the ASM, and was president of the Canadian Society for Microbiologists. He was co-founding member with 6 scientists of the Canadian Bacterial Diseases Network CBDN. His research is systems biology of virulence, antibiotic resistance and genome evolution.
Ruiyan is a PhD candidate in the Department of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto. Graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, she is interested in applying advanced deep learning techniques to medical image classification and segmentation in radiotherapy. Her current research focuses on automatic segmentation of targets and organs-at-risk in cervical brachytherapy using deep learning.
Russ Greiner worked in both academic and industrial research before settling at the University of Alberta, where he is now a Professor in Computing Science (Adjunct in Psychiatry) and the founding Scientific Director of the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute. He was elected a Fellow of the AAAI, was awarded a McCalla Professorship and a Killam Annual Professorship; received a 2020 FGSR Great Supervisor Award and in 2021, received the CAIAC Lifetime Achievement Award and became a CIFAR AI Chair. In 2022, he received the (UofA) Precision Health Innovator Award, then in 2023, he received the CS-Can | Info-Can Lifetime Achievement Award. For his mentoring, he received a 2020 FGSR Great Supervisor Award, then in 2023, the Killam Award for Excellence in Mentoring. He has published over 350 refereed papers, most in the areas of machine learning and recently medical informatics, including 6 that have been awarded Best Paper prizes.
Bioinformatician and data analyst in the Bader lab applying pathway and data analysis to varied data types. Developed Enrichment Map App for Cytoscape, an app to visually translate functional enrichment results from popular enrichment tools like GSEA to networks. Further developed the Enrichment Map Pipeline including development of additional Apps to help summarize and analyze resulting Enrichment Maps, including PostAnalysis, WordCloud, and AutoAnnotate App.
He graduated with Ph.D in Informatics from University of Missouri-Columbia in December 2019. His current work focusses on understanding Acute Myeloid Leukemia at the single cell level using Single cell RNA-sequencing analysis. He is interested in developing informatics approaches in Single cell RNA-seq to better understand Cancer.