Meet Your Faculty
William Hsiao
Associate Professor
Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University
Vancouver, BC, CA
William Hsiao is a public health infectious disease researcher with a background in microbial genomics and bioinformatics. He is an associate professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University and an affiliated researcher at BCCDC Public Health Laboratory and at Canada’s Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre. Will leads an interdisciplinary group of researchers interested in solving practical public health and animal health problems through a One Health lens at the Centre for Infectious Disease Genomics and One Health.
Aaron Petkau
Head of Bioinformatics Pipeline Development
Science Technology Cores and Services
National Microbiology Laboratory
Public Health Agency of Canada
Winnipeg, MB, CA
William Hsiao is a public health infectious disease researcher with a background in microbial genomics and bioinformatics. He is an associate professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University and an affiliated researcher at BCCDC Public Health Laboratory and at Canada’s Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre. Will leads an interdisciplinary group of researchers interested in solving practical public health and animal health problems through a One Health lens at the Centre for Infectious Disease Genomics and One Health.
Jared Simpson
Principal Investigator, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research
Assistant Prof. Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
Vancouver, BC, CA
Dr. Simpson develops algorithms and software for the analysis of high-throughput sequencing data. He is interested in de novo assembly and the detection of sequence variation in individuals, cancers and populations, with a focus on long read sequencing technologies. Dr. Simpson developed the ABYSS, SGA and nanopolish software packages.
Fiona Brinkman
Distinguished Professor, FRSC, Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
Associate Member, School of Computing Science and Faculty of Health Sciences
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, BC, CA
Dr. Brinkman is developing bioinformatic resources to better track infectious diseases using genomic data, and improve prediction of new vaccine/drug targets. Her primary aim is to develop more sustainable, integrated approaches for infectious disease control, however she is also applying her methods to aid allergy, child health, and environmental research.
Finlay Maguire
Assistant Professor
Faculty of Computer Science and Department of Community Health & Epidemiology
Dalhousie University
Halifax, NS, CA
Finlay Maguire is a data scientist whose work centers on leveraging data in innovative ways to answer questions related to applied health and social issues. This includes developing bioinformatics methods to more effectively use genomic data to mitigate infectious diseases and broad interdisciplinary collaborations in areas such as refugee healthcare provision and online radicalisation. They are an active contributor to the national and international public health responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and act as a genomic epidemiology advisor for Sunnybrook’s Shared Hospital Laboratory.
Guillaume Bourque
Professor, McGill University
Director of Bioinformatics, Genome Quebec Innovation Centre
Director, Canadian Centre of Computational Genomics
Director, McGill initiative for Computational Medicine
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.
Gary Van Domselaar
Chief Bioinformatics Scientist
National Microbiology Laboratory
Public Health Agency of Canada
Winnipeg, MB, CA
Dr. Gary Van Domselaar, PhD (University of Alberta, 2003) is the Chief Bioinformatics Scientist at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg Canada and Associate Professor in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at the University of Manitoba. Dr. Van Domselaar’s lab develops bioinformatics methods and pipelines to understand, track, and control circulating infectious diseases in Canada and globally. His research and development activities span metagenomics, infectious disease genomic epidemiology, genome annotation, population structure analysis, and microbial genome wide association studies. His lab contributes to large-scale national and international genomics and bioinformatics efforts, including the Bioinformatics Workgroup of the Canadian Genomics Research and Development Initiative Interdepartmental Project on Antimicrobial Resistance, the Integrated Rapid Infectious Disease Analysis (IRIDA) project to develop an integrated computational platform for infectious disease outbreak investigations, the Canadian COVID-19 genomics network (CanCOGeN), and the Canadian Public Health Laboratory Network COVID-19 Genomics Program. Dr. Van Domselaar serves on a number of national and international scientific advisory groups, including the US Centers for Disease Control, the Global Coalition for Science and Regulatory Research, and PHA4GE.
Ed Taboada
Research Scientist
Genomic Epidemiology Research Unit
Division of Enteric Diseases
National Microbiology Laboratory
Public Health Agency of Canada
Winnipeg, MB, CA
Eduardo Taboada is a research scientist in the Division of Enteric Diseases at the NML. Since obtaining his PhD in molecular genetics at the Department of Biology, University of Ottawa in 1999, he has applied his expertise in molecular biology and population genetics towards the development of comparative genomics and bioinformatics-based tools for studying various aspects of the biology, ecology, and epidemiology of bacterial food- and waterborne pathogens, with a focus on Campylobacter, Salmonella, and E. coli. Over these past two decades, Ed has led or participated in several projects funded by Genome Canada and the federal government’s Genomics Research and Development Initiative. His current research focus is on developing quantitative tools for integrated genomic and epidemiologic analysis and the application of analytical epidemiology approaches to genomic datasets.
Emma Griffiths
Emma Griffiths
Research Associate
Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Emma Griffiths is a research associate at the Centre for Infectious Disease Genomics and One Health (CIDGOH) in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. Her work focuses on developing and implementing ontologies and data standards for public health and food safety genomics to help improve data harmonization and integration. She is a member of the Standards Council of Canada and leads the Public Health Alliance for Genomic Epidemiology (PHA4GE) Data Structures Working Group.
Andrew McArthur
Professor and Director BDC Program
Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences
McMaster University
Hamilton, ON, CA
Dr. McArthur is a Professor and David Braley Chair in Computational Biology at McMaster University. Dr. McArthur has had a career in the United States and Canada, including NIH-funded positions at the Marine Biological Laboratory and Brown University, where he led the genome assembly of the diarrheal pathogen Giardia intestinalis, plus 10 years of experience in the private sector. Dr. McArthur’s research team focuses on building tools, databases, and algorithms for the genomic surveillance of infectious pathogens. He and his team developed the Comprehensive Antibiotic Resistance Database (card.mcmaster.ca) and the SARS-CoV-2 Illumina GeNome Assembly Line software platform.
Michelle Brazas
Acting Scientific Director
Canadian Bioinformatics Workshops (CBW)
Toronto, ON, CA
Dr. Michelle Brazas is the Associate Director for Adaptive Oncology at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR), and acting Scientific Director at Bioinformatics.ca. Previously, Dr. Brazas was the Program Manager for Bioinformatics.ca and a faculty member in Biotechnology at BCIT. Michelle co-founded and runs the Toronto Bioinformatics User Group (TorBUG) now in its 11th season, and plays an active role in the International Society of Computational Biology where she sits on the Board of Directors and Executive Board.
Rhiannon Cameron
PhD Graduate Student Researcher
Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University
Vancouver, BC, CA
Rhiannon completed her Bachelor of Science in Microbiology in 2019 and is currently a PhD student in the Faculty of Health Sciences at SFU under the supervision of Dr. Hsiao at the Centre for Infectious Disease Genomics and One Health (CIDGOH). Her work focuses on ontology curation and development for outbreak investigation and surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 for the Canadian COVID-19 Genomics Network (CanCOGeN) and food-borne pathogen risk assessment modeling for the Canadian Antimicrobial Resistance Genomics Research and Development Initiative (AMR-GRDI), and developing ontology/metadata-curation training resources. In her spare time, Rhiannon volunteers with the Vancouver Bioinformatics User Group and the Neil Squire Society Computer Comforts program.
Karyn Mukiri
PhD Graduate Student Researcher
Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University
Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences
Hamilton, ON, CA
Karyn is a second-year PhD student under the supervision of Dr. Andrew McArthur where her main research focus is on the development of predictive genomic annotation algorithms to increase antibiotic resistance surveillance by the Resistance Gene Identifier. She is also a McMaster alum, having completed her undergraduate degree in Biotechnology under the Faculty of Engineering. Although the bulk of her work focuses on more algorithmic problems, her current research efforts are in helping pinpoint instances of miscuration within the Comprehensive Antibiotic Resistance Database.
Miguel Prieto
PhD Graduate Student Researcher
Simon Fraser University
Faculty of Health Sciences
Vancouver, BC, CA
Miguel is a first year PhD student studying the impact of human infectious diseases and the role of the microbiome in humans. Particularly, he aims to use machine learning and metagenomic analysis to predict poor outcomes in chronic respiratory diseases. Miguel is a Medical Doctor from the Universidad del Valle in Colombia and has worked as a researcher and project coordinator on translational studies of neglected tropical diseases like leishmaniasis. Before coming to SFU, he completed a Master of Experimental Medicine at UBC exploring blood-based gene expression biomarkers of nontuberculous mycobacterial infections in patients with cystic fibrosis.
Jimmy Liu
PhD Graduate Student Researcher
Simon Fraser University
Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
Burnaby, BC, CA
Jimmy Liu completed his BSc. in Biochemistry at the University of British Columbia in 2019. During his undergraduate study, he worked as a lab technologist at the JC Wilt Infectious Diseases Research Centre where he developed passion for infectious disease genomics. Inspired by the widespread adoption of genomic sequencing to inform decison making, he decided to pursue further training in bioinformatics and genomic epidemiology by joining Dr. William Hsiao’s group at the Simon Fraser University as a Ph.D. trainee. His thesis research involves the joint application of machine learning, graph structures, and sequence alignment algorithms to characterize the pan-genome evolution of Salmonella enterica. The discoveries from his pan-genome analyses will drive the refinement of existing typing methods for disease reporting and outbreak detection.
Jalees Nasir
PhD Graduate Student Researcher
McMaster University
Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences
Hamilton, ON, CA
Jalees Nasir is a Ph.D. Candidate in the McArthur Laboratory at McMaster University. His work focuses on developing molecular epidemiological tools for the surveillance of respiratory viral infections, including SARS-CoV-2. These tools primarily come in the form of molecular assays for target enrichment, including bait capture. However, with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, he has also developed software for processing sequencing data (SARS-CoV-2 Illumina GeNome Assembly Line; SIGNAL) to contribute to ongoing surveillance efforts.
Madeline McCarthy
PhD Graduate Student Researcher
McMaster University
Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences
Hamilton, ON, CA
Madeline is a PhD Candidate in the McArthur Lab at McMaster University. Her work focuses on the development of targeted, cost-effective methods for culture-free outbreak detection and surveillance of bacterial pathogens. In addition to whole genome capture, she is testing the feasibility of targeted, culture-free plasmid recovery using bait capture and long-read sequencing. Prior to her PhD, she completed a MSc in microbiology at the University of Saskatchewan where she studied E. coli outbreaks in broiler chickens before hanging up her pipettes and switching to bioinformatics.
Charlie Barclay
MSc Graduate Student Researcher
University of British Columbia
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Vancouver, BC, CA
Charlie completed her Masters in Marine Biology from the University of Southampton in 2013 and then spent 5 years working as a Data Manager at the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London, during which she became involved in the Darwin Tree of Life project, standardizing data at capture which led her to retrain in Bioinformatics. Charlie is currently working on the de novo genome assembly of a comb jelly Mnemiopsis leidyi and how genomic insights of this early branching metazoan can help us uncover mechanisms into cell differentiation and multicellularity. Recently she has furthered her interest in FAIR data and ontologies through an internship in Centre for Infectious Disease Genomics and One Health (CIDGOH).
Nia Hughes
Program Manager, Bioinformatics.ca
Ontario Institute for Cancer Research
Toronto, ON, CA
Nia is the Program Manager for Bioinformatics.ca, where she coordinates the Canadian Bioinformatics Workshop Series. Prior to starting at OICR, she completed her M.Sc. in Bioinformatics from the University of Guelph in 2020 before working there as a bioinformatician studying epigenetic and transcriptomic patterns across maize varieties.
Zhibin Lu
HPC and Bioinformatics Services Manager at Princess Margaret
Cancer Centre, University Health Network
Bioinformatics and HPC Core, UHN
Toronto, ON, CA
Zhibin Lu is a senior manager at University Health Network Digital. He is responsible for UHN HPC operations and scientific software. He manages two HPC clusters at UHN, including system administration, user management, and maintenance of bioinformatics tools for HPC4health. He is also skilled in Next-Gen sequence data analysis and has developed and maintained bioinformatics pipelines at the Bioinformatics and HPC Core. He is a member of the Digital Research Alliance of Canada Bioinformatics National Team and Scheduling National Team.