Dr. Daniel Felsky is an Independent Scientist and Head of Whole Person Modelling in the Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics at CAMH and Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Institute of Medical Science (IMS) at the University of Toronto.

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Dr. Felsky completed his PhD in neuroimaging and genetics of Alzheimer’s disease at IMS in 2015. Following this, Dr. Felsky completed postdoctoral fellowships at the Anne Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, in Boston, and the Centre for Translational and Computational Neuroimmunology at Columbia University Medical Centre in New York.

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Dr. Felsky has experience across several areas including structural brain imaging, human genomics and transcriptomics, neuroimmunology, biostatistics, psychiatric epidemiology, and study design. In addition to his research, Dr. Felsky is a passionate teacher, and has taught globally as a Fellow for the Harvard Global Initiative for Neuropsychiatric Genetics Education in Research, co-sponsored by the Stanley Centre for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

Mohamed is a Postdoctoral Fellow working on using machine and deep learning to model psychiatric disorders.

He previously worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher in Washington University in St. Louis where he was building machine learning models to predict post-surgical medical complications. He also worked as a researcher in Kyoto University Hospital studying neural activity markers of Schizophrenia using brain decoding techniques. His doctoral work in Kyoto University focused on using deep learning models to understand robustness of human brain in recognizing degraded visual input.

 

He possesses a wide range of skills in computational neuroscience, neural imaging, machine and deep learning, and electronic design.

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Check out Mohamed's website at https://mabdelhack.github.io/

Samar is a postdoctoral fellow at the Pharmacogenetics Research Clinic (PGxRC) under the primary supervision of Dr. Daniel Mueller. Her research focuses on the pharmacogenetics of late-life depression, especially, developing models that integrate clinical, demographics and genetics information to predict antidepressant response.

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Samar's diverse background provided her with strong computational skills and unique insights into molecular-genetic research. Prior to joining CAMH, Samar completed a one-year postdoctoral fellowship specializing in population genomics at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, where she was also awarded her PhD in Bioinformatics. Samar also holds two masters degrees, in statistics and mathematical sciences. 

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In her spare time, Samar teaches data science and programming for fun! She enjoys long walks, nature and takes amazing pictures

Stuart is a postdoctoral candidate in the Felsky and Tripathy labs, who is using polygenic scoring and mixed modelling to study the specific genes and environments that contribute to the appearance of co-morbid conditions in Alzheimer's disease patients.

 

Stuart is also an academically trained high school educator, and a vocal advocate on behalf of the vision loss community, himself being visually impaired. Outside of academic circles, Stuart is an amateur singer and vocal percussionist with the A Cappella choir SoundCrowd, and a long distance runner. Stuart is also a dad to Grace, and is loving every minute.

Melissa is a research analyst in the Felsky Lab who is investigating the interplay between genetics and exercise on psychotic experiences in youth.

 

She previously graduated with a Master’s of Health Sciences in Medical Physiology from the University of Toronto. As a graduate student, Melissa completed a practicum project in the Felsky Lab, where she developed a passion for using computational methods to unravel genetic associations with mental health. She looks forward to further pursuing this passion as a research analyst to determine if exercise mitigates genetic risk for mental illness to decrease psychotic experiences in youth.

Earvin Tio is a graduate student with the Institute of Medical Science and a member of the Collaborative Program in Neuroscience. His research focuses on uncovering neuroimmune mechanisms that underlie suicidal ideation by leveraging large cohort studies and machine learning.

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Earvin graduated from the University of Waterloo with a Bachelor of Applied Science in Systems Design Engineering and a specialization in Artificial Intelligence. During his undergraduate studies, Earvin also had the opportunity to study abroad in Switzerland at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, studying computer science.

 

Earvin is passionate about destigmatizing mental illness. He actively works with GradMinds, the University of Toronto's graduate student mental health committee, regularly contributes to Elemental Magazine, the University of Toronto's official mental health magazine, and with Let's Talk Grad Wellness, a student-ran wellness initiative.

Rachel is a graduate student at the Institute of Medical Science, University of Toronto. Her research explores the role of genetics in cardiovascular health and physical activity. Through this work, she is interested in how this interaction can be applied to predicting age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's. Rachel is enthusiastic to be taking a whole person approach to expand upon our understanding of mental health and the pathophysiology of cognitive decline.

 

Rachel graduated from Bowdoin College (Brunswick, Maine) with a double major in Biology and German. During her undergraduate studies, she completed a German Honours project on the representation of women in medicine and science during the Weimar Republic. Rachel has been a competitive tennis player from a young age and had the opportunity to play on Bowdoin's tennis team. She is currently a member of the Varsity Blues tennis team.

Denise is an IMS student at the University of Toronto. Her graduate thesis, supervised by Dr. Felsky, uses statistical methods to analyze the determinants of mental health in youth. She is also involved in the planning and analysis of the Toronto Adolescent & Youth cohort study.

Denise completed her bachelor degree in Health Sciences at McMaster University with a specialization in Child Health. She is also involved in advocacy efforts aimed at supporting marginalized groups through her work at The Salvation Army Lawson Ministries Hamilton and various writing groups.

Denise hopes to continue to find new ways to promote knowledge translation and advocacy though her research at CAMH and external partnerships.

Mu is a graduate master student at Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. He is joining Dr. Felsky's lab as a practicum student, focusing on computational modelling of cognitive trajectories in aging.

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Mu completed his undergraduate studies at University of Waterloo majored in Mathematics with minors of Statistics and Psychology. After graduation, Mu spent a year and a half in the Chinese internet industry to improve his professional skills such as data manipulation and computer simulation.

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Mu is passionate about integrating his knowledge of data science with fields of psychology and genetic studies.

Roberta is a summer student with the Comprehensive Research Experience for Medical Students (CREMS) Program through the University of Toronto MD program. Her project over the summer focusses on integrative modeling of mental health and substance use in Ontario youth using machine learning.

Roberta’s undergraduate studies were in Electrical and Biomedical Engineering at McMaster University, a background which she hopes to continually apply to medicine in her research and career endeavours. She is particularly passionate about bridging the gap between engineering knowledge and clinical practice as well as creating technological tools to improve and personalize healthcare delivery.

Cathlyn is a 4th-year undergraduate student at the University of Toronto majoring in Computer Science and Psychology. She’s joining Dr. Felsky’s lab to complete a research project course (CSC494) and will be working on the identification of cognitive subtypes in substance use disorders using machine learning methods.
 

Cathlyn is interested in using data science, machine learning, and computational models to better understand the mechanisms of mental disorders to improve diagnostic criteria and treatments. She is also passionate about supporting individuals experiencing mental health problems and she has been volunteering as a listener through online platforms. In her spare time, Cathlyn enjoys being active such as playing volleyball and climbing.

Jenny is an undergraduate student at UofT, studying bioinformatics & computational biology and computer science. She is joining Dr. Felsky's lab as a research course student, focusing on the association between copy number variation and Alzheimer’s disease.

Previously, Jenny was a research student at the Hospital for Sick Children, where she evaluated a novel catalogue-free genome-wide repeat expansion detection tool against existing tools and identified confounding factors that contribute to the reliability of the outputs. She is interested in the development of novel bioinformatic tools for better disease diagnosis and treatments.

Emily is an undergraduate student in the Faculty of Science at UBC, with a specialty in microbiology. She is joining Dr. Felsky’s lab as a summer Research Trainee. Her project focuses on the role of genetics in both physical and cognitive longevity.

 

Emily is interested in the interaction between both gross and fine motor activity and cognitive health, and how that interaction can be applied to predicting age-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s. She continues to pursue the connection between genetics and longevity on a large scale.

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