People - Wodak Lab

Dr. Shoshana J. Wodak obtained her PhD degree from Columbia University, New York, USA. She was Professor and Director of the Centre for Structural Biology and Bioinformatics, at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, and a Group Leader at the European Bioinformatics Institute, Cambridge UK, before joining the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, in 2004. She currently occupies there the post of Scientific Director of the Center for Computational Biology and Senior Scientist in the Structural Biology Program. She also is a Tier I Canada Research Chair in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics and Professor at the Departments of Biochemistry and of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto. Dr. Wodak gained recognition for her pioneering work on many computational methods for the analysis, prediction and simulations of protein structures and protein interactions. More recently she has been developing advanced database tools for the representation and analysis of protein-protein interaction networks and biochemical pathways, as well as computational methods for protein design and the analysis of protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions.

I joined Dr. Shoshana Wodak's lab in 2004. My current position is research project manager and I oversee several research projects. I graduated from Lanzhou medical college in China in 1988. Since then, I have spent most of my time as a biomedical researcher in the United States and Canada. My earlier work was mostly in the field of neuroscience, particularly, neuroendocrine regulation of reproductive functions and feeding behaviors. Later on, I have re-focused my research activities on computational biology and bioinformatics.

I joined the Wodak lab in December 2007. I am currently a technical co-ordinator of the large-scale CIHR Team project Model Organism Interactomes and Human Diseases [link to CIHR project site] and perform other R&D duties. My research interests include machine-learning applications in bioinformatics, spatio-temporal data mining, and biomedical image analysis. I hold a PhD in Mathematical Computer Science (2002) and M.Sc. degrees in Mathematical Computer Science (1997) and Applied Mathematics (1995).

Prior to joining the Wodak lab, I worked at the Sun Center of Excellence for Visual Genomics (COE), University of Calgary, where I led the development of the 4D Bioinformatics research initiative and the CAVEman project. My earlier work at the COE (2002-2005) was within the scope of the Bioinformatics Platform, a project funded by the Genome Canada to create a unified national infrastructure for research in bioinformatics. Between 1998 and 2002, I worked at the National Center for Data Mining in Chicago, USA, where I was involved in the Project DataSpace, an infrastructure for exploring, analyzing, and mining remote and distributed data. I have developed numerous software projects since 1992, and managed several large-scale software initiatives (combined value over $7M) since 2004. I am also certified in teaching, and have taught extensively in both academia (13 semesters) and in industry (7 years).

I am a PhD student in the department of biochemistry at the University of Toronto. After graduating with a BASc in computer engineering from the University of Toronto, I worked for two years as a software developer before returning to school. My research interests are in the areas of systems biology, machine learning, and the many types of interaction networks found within the cell.