Our Team

Vincent Ferretti

Senior Principal Investigator & Associate Director, Bioinformatics & Bio-computing, OICR

Email: vincent.ferrettioicr.on.ca

Dr. Ferretti’s expertise is in bioinformatics, with extensive experience in both large-scale software development and computational genomics. Prior to joining OICR, Dr. Ferretti was the Chief Bioinformatician at the McGill University and Genome Quebec Innovation Center, which supported the HapMap project and other GWAS studies. As Associate Director of Bioinformatics Software Development at OICR, Dr. Ferretti’s team develops scalable, portable, open-source software and public data web portals in support of the ICGC Data Coordination Center and NCI’s Genome Data Commons (GDC), both of which have garnered worldwide accolades for their ease of use, performance and technical innovation. Dr. Ferretti also leads the architecture, database structure and pipeline packages of the cloud-based Cancer Genome Collaboratory project. Dr. Ferretti is co-director of the Maelstrom Research program where he is heading the development of open source software for epidemiological data management and harmonization.

Publications & Presentations

Paul Boutros

Principal Investigator, Bioinformatics & Bio-computing, OICR

Email: paul.boutrosoicr.on.ca

A computational biologist, develops algorithms for discovery of predictive and prognostic biomarkers in cancer genomes and is responsible for the ICGC Canadian prostate cancer sequencing project’s informatics.

Publications & Presentations

Francis Ouellette

Senior Scientist & Associate Director, Bioinformatics & Bio-computing, OICR

Email: francisoicr.on.ca

A bioinformatician, was coordinator for GenBank for many years, founded the Canadian Bioinformatics Workshops, and built ICGC’s collaborative infrastructure.

Publications & Presentations

Cenk Sahinalp

Professor, Computer Science, Simon Fraser

Email: cenksfu.ca

Cenk Sahinalp's background is in combinatorial pattern matching. His recent research focuses on the application of combinatorial algorithms to problems in computational genomics and systems biology. His group develops basic computational methods for the compression and indexing of large bimolecular sequences, as well as algorithmic approaches for variant detection, heterogeneity modeling, and network-based interpretation, especially for cancer genome, transcriptome and proteome data. Computational tools developed by the Sahinalp group include VariationHunter, CommonLAW, DeFuse, Comrad, nFuse, mr & mrs FAST, SCALCE, DeeZ, OptDis, Hit'nDrive, Cliiq, Orman, Dissect and Cypiripi

Publications & Presentations

Guillaume Bourque

Associate Professor, Department of Human Genetics, McGill University

Email: guil.bourquemcgill.ca

Background is in applied mathematics, directs the bioinformatics platform at the Genome Quebec Innovation Centre and develops algorithms for predicting the functional effects of genome variations.

Publications & Presentations

Sohrab Shah

Associate Professor, Department of Pathology & Computer Science, UBC

Email: sshahbccrc.ca

Dr. Shah received a PhD in computer science from UBC in 2008 and was appointed as a Principal Investigator to The BC Cancer Agency and the University of British Columbia in 2010.   He holds the Canada Research Chair in Computational Cancer Genomics, and is the recipient of both a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Career Investigator Award and a Terry Fox Research Institute New Investigator Award. His research focuses on understanding how tumours evolve over time through integrative approaches involving genomics and computational modeling.  Dr. Shah has pioneered computational methods for inference of mutations in cancer genomes as well as deciphering patterns of cancer evolution.  He has pioneered development of novel Bayesian statistical models, algorithms, and computational approaches to analyze large, high dimensional genomics and transcriptomic data sets, from both patient tumours and model systems.  This includes advancing molecular profiling of cancer cells at single cell resolution.  Dr. Shah has been at the forefront of studying tumor evolution in breast, ovary and lymphoid malignancies.  His work has been published in Nature, Nature Genetics, Nature Methods and the New England Journal of Medicine.

Publications & Presentations

Khaled el Emam

Professor, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, University of Ottawa

Email: kelemamehealthinformation.ca

Background is in electrical engineering and computer science, is a pioneer in applying secure computation techniques to relational and sequence data without revealing personally identifying information.

Bartha Knoppers

Professor, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Human Genetics, McGill University

Email: bartha.knoppersmcgill.ca

Bartha Maria Knoppers, PhD, is Director of the Centre of Genomics and Policy, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Human Genetics, McGill University, Canada Research Chair in Law and Medicine 2001- and the holder of Chaire d’excellence Pierre Fermat (France) (2006-2008), she was named Distinguished Visiting Scientist (Netherlands Genomics Initiative) (2009-2012). Formerly, Professor at the Faculté de droit, Université de Montréal (1985-2009) and Senior Researcher at the Centre de recherche en droit public (C.R.D.P.) (1996-2009). Graduate of McMaster University (B.A.), University of Alberta (M.A.), McGill University (LL.B., B.C.L.), Cambridge University, U.K., (D.L.S.), Sorbonne Paris I) (Phd.) she was admitted to the Bar of Québec in 1985. Professor Knoppers was the former, Chair of the International Ethics committee of the Human Genome Organization (HUGO), (1996-2004), and member of the International Bioethics Committee of the United Nations, Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) which drafted the Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights (1993-1997). Co-Founder of the International Institute of Research in Ethics and Biomedicine (IIREB) (2000 – 2009), she founded the Population Project in Genomics (P3G) and CARTaGENE in 2003. From 2000-2006 she served on the Board of Genome Canada, became Chair of the Ethics Working Party of the International Stem Cell Forum, Co-Chair of the Sampling/ELSI Committee of the 1000 Genomes Project (2007-) and a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) (2009-). In 2013, she became Chair of the Regulatory and Ethics Working Group and Member of the Steering Committee (TSC) of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health.

Publications & Presentations