Directors
Simon Gayther, PhD
Dr. Gayther’s research program is largely focused on understanding the underlying causes of ovarian cancer initiation and development. Dr Gayther has a long established track record in defining the heritable component of ovarian cancer, and the functional role of both common and rare risk variants and their target susceptibility genes in the early stage disease pathogenesis. The overall approach of this research program is to integrate genomics and epigenomics analyses to identify molecular markers associated with disease, with cell biology modeling studies to validate the role of novel molecular markers in disease biology.
Simon Knott, PhD
Dr. Knott received his PhD from the Department of Molecular and Computational Biology at the University of Southern California, with Dr. Oscar Aparicio and Dr. Simon Tavaré acting as his mentors. Subsequently, he joined the laboratory of Dr. Gregory Hannon at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. In the Hannon lab, he developed computational and molecular tools to study gene function in mammalian cells. In addition, he applied these tools to identify novel drivers of breast cancer progression.
Associate Directors
Jasmine Plummer, PhD
Dr. Plummer completed her HonBSc in Biology and Chemistry at University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada where she worked with Dr. JJB Smith on sensory circuitry.Dr. Plummer joined the Department of Physiology and Biophysics, at Dalhousie University (Halifax, Canada) in the laboratory of Dr. Croll. She completed her Masters of Science (MSc) in neuroscience, specializing in comparative neurobiology and neuro development. In her PhD work,, Dr.Plummer took a genetic approach to identifying new genes that regulate the development of the nervous system. Dr. Plummer’s post-doctoral fellowship focused on systems biology approaches to understanding genetic risk of neurodevelopmental disorders.
Yizhou Wang, PhD
Dr. Wang obtained his PhD in Plant Science (Bioinformatics track) and MS in Statistics from the University of California, Riverside where he studied epigenetics in the fungi genome under the mentorship of Dr. Jason E. Stajich. He was trained in molecular biology, genetics and NGS/multi-omics data handling and analysis. Dr. Wang served as a senior mutation analyst in a biotech company in 2014 analyzing SNVs and indels called from whole exome sequencing data of autism patients. He joined the AGCT Core in 2015 and currently serves as a the Associate Director of Computational Sciences.