People

Gavin Ieong is a recent graduate in the Bachelor’s of Bioinformatics Program at Langara College. During his studies, he contributed to projects at the college’s Applied Research Centre, applying his background in biology and machine learning to real-world biological problems.

Burger is a member of the Robert-Cedergren Centre for Bioinformatics and Genomics, teacher in graduate bioinformatics education programs, and full professor in Biochemistry at the Universite de Montreal.

Gregory Butler is Professor emeritus of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. He is a founder of the Centre for Structural and Functional Genomics at Concordia where he directs the development of the bioinformatics platform for large-scale fungal genomics projects. His research focuses on advanced IT for knowledge-based bioinformatics, including scientific data management, algorithms, text mining, ontologies and the semantic web. Dr Butler is a founding member of the Canadian Semantic Web Interest Group.

Gregory develops and implements clinical genomic tests focusing on molecular profiling of tumour specimens for Toronto General Hospital and Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. His PhD from the University of Guelph explored the maize developmental transcriptome, showing how patterns of co-regulation can help us to understand the function of unannotated genes.

Dr. Schwartz is a Scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and Assistant Professor in the Department of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto. He has developed several methodologies for mutation detection, data integration, and cellular population visualization to understand cancer heterogeneity and diverse responses to anti-cancer therapies. His current research involves integrating multi-omic information and leveraging single-cell resolution to identify underlying mechanisms of drug resistance in cancer.

Dr. Bourque’s research interests are in comparative and functional genomics with a special emphasis on applications of next-generation sequencing technologies. His lab develops advanced tools and scalable computational infrastructure to enable large-scale applied research projects.

Dr. Gustavo Sganzerla Martinez is a postdoctoral fellow at Dalhousie University. Gustavo’s work sits at the very intersection between computer science and biology. By being fascinated by coding and how computers work, Gustavo develops computational solutions for biological problems.

Dr. Hamed Najafabadi obtained his PhD from McGill University in 2012, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in University of Toronto. He joined McGill University as a faculty member in 2016, where he is now an Associate Professor of Human Genetics and holds a Canada Research Chair in Systems Biology of Gene Regulation. His lab develops data-driven computational methods to characterize the role of gene regulatory factors in determining cell identity and function, and combines them with patient omics data to uncover the basis for development and progression of cancer.

Han Yu is a first-year PhD student in the Quantitative Life Sciences program at McGill University. She holds a BSc in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics from Beijing Forestry University and a MSc in Biostatistics from Yale University. Han has supported graduate teaching and contributed to enhancing data visualization in clinical research through industry internships.

My research interests are in next-generation sequencing technologies and pipelines and in better understanding genetic diseases such as cancer. I have a BSc in Cellular, Molecular and Microbial Biology from the University of Calgary and an MBinf (Bioinformatics) from the University of Guelph. I am currently completing my PhD at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research and the University of Toronto.

Herbert H. Tsang is a Professor of Computing Science and Mathematics at Trinity Western University, where he leads the Applied Research Lab. He is also adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University. Previously, he served as a project engineer and R&D engineer at MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates. Tsang holds M.S. in electrical engineering and PhD in computing science from Washington University in St. Louis and Simon Fraser University respectively. His research focused on computational intelligence with applications in bioinformatics, computational criminology, and mobile computing. He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Tsang is also a registered Professional Engineer (P.Eng.) in the province of British Columbia, Canada. Dr. Tsang received the International E-Learning Association’s Mobile Learning Award in 2018 and the Canadian Network for Innovation in Education’s Excellent and Innovation – Partnership & Collaboration Award in 2019.