Activity 3
Indigenous Background Variant Library

Wyeth W. Wasserman
PhD, Senior Scientist, Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics; Professor, Department of Medical Genetics, University of British Columbia

Co-Project Leader and Team Lead Activity 3

Having worked in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry in both North America and Europe, Dr. Wasserman’s research focuses on projects with applied biomedical impacts. His computational biology laboratory develops computer algorithms for the analysis of human DNA sequences. Originally established at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute and since 2002 at the University of British Columbia, Dr. Wasserman’s lab provides international leadership in the identification and engineered design of DNA sequences that control when and where in the body each gene is active – the On and Off switches. With the arrival of low cost DNA sequencing for patients, his team works closely with clinicians at BC Children’s Hospital to discover the genetic causes impacting patients and families. He has published over 150 peer-reviewed papers, participated in over $25-million of funded research, and supervised more than 60 graduate and post-doctoral trainees.
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Dora Pak

Project Manager 

Dora is a Research Manager in the Wasserman and Taubert labs, at the Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics (CMMT), University of British Columbia situated at the BC Children's Hospital Research Institute, in Vancouver. She has been working in UBC about 20 years, and is responsible for overall finances and works collaboratively on other administrative operations of the Silent Genomes project.

Brad Winter

Web Developer, Wasserman lab, University of British Columbia

 Brittany Hewitson

Bioinformatics Programmer, Wasserman lab, University of British Columbia

Brittany has completed her B.A.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering with a Minor in Computing Science and currently works on various programming projects within the Wasserman lab. As part of the Silent Genomes project, she will help in the development of a web interface to allow physicians access to collected variant and gene information.

 

Alejandro Aguirre

is a B.Sc. in Biology and a Master student candidate in Bioinformatics at the CMMT. His previous work experience includes creating databases and analysis pipelines for genomic data, and web development. In the Silent Genomes Project, Alejandro’s participation involves the generation of the database that will store variant and gene information, as well as building a user-friendly web interface that allows physicians readily access and use such data.

Lies Van Horebeek
Postdoctoral Researcher

Stephanie Quon
Work-Learn Student

Kiana Rashidi
Work-Learn Student

 

 Ripan Malhi
PhD, Associate Professor, Anthropology, Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois

Simon Gravel
PhD, Assistant Professor, Department or Human Genetics, McGill University Canada Research Chair in Population and Statistical Genetics

Laura Arbour
MD, MSc, MSc, FRCPC, FCCMG Professor, Medical Genetics, University of British Columbia; Affiliate Professor, Division of Medical Sciences, University of Victoria
Project Leader

 

Thanks for working with us!

 Solenne Correard

PhD, Postdoctoral fellow, Wasserman lab, University of British Columbia

Solenne is a postdoctoral fellow in the Wasserman lab, at the Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics (CMMT), University of British Columbia situated at the BC Children's Hospital Research Institute, in Vancouver. Trained in genetics, genomics and bioinformatics (University de Rennes, France), she works on the conceptualization and development of the Indigenous Background Variant Library (IBVL).

Mohammed Abdallah

PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow

Mohammed is a postdoctoral fellow in the Wasserman lab, at the Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics (CMMT). He graduated from the faculty of medicine, university of Khartoum, Sudan. He did his Ph.D. on the genomics of understudied populations of Sudan. He later did a postdoctoral fellowship at UCT (university of Cape Town) working on the H3ABioNet AGVD (African Genome Variation Database). He works on the design and development of reproducible and scalable genomic pipelines for the Indigenous Background Variant Library (IBVL).

Tamar Av-Shalom

Scientific programmer, Wasserman's lab, University of British Columbia 

Having completed her B.Sc. in Computer Science and Microbiology at UBC she now works on various different programming projects within the Wasserman lab. She was helping with web development and database management in activity 3 of the Silent Genomes Project.
 
Phillip Richmond

PhD candidate, Wasserman lab, University of British Columbia Phillip is studying bioinformatics applied to rare disease genomics. Since 2015, Phillip has been interacting with the BCCHR IT department to establish clinical-grade compute clusters for patient genomic data analysis. Within this timeframe, he has implemented genomics workflows on several iterations of the BCCHR Genome Analysis Cluster, and currently serves as the manager of the multi-user system. As a member of the Silent Genomes team, his initial role in this project was to help establish a secure compute environment for the processing and storage of Silent Genomes whole genome sequencing data. This included interacting with BCCHR IT to coordinate cluster purchasing and deployment of the compute server. 

Sayaka Sekishima Bioinformatics Programmer

Matthew Oldach Bioinformatics Programmer