Meet the Instructors
Fouad Yousif, Founder
Fouad completed his bachelor degree in science from McMaster University. During his final year, he took a course in computational biology that sparked his interest in learning programming and using it to solve biological questions. To continue the development of his programming skills after graduation, he enrolled in Seneca College and completed a certificate in Bioinformatics.
Since then, he has obtained a Masters in Biostatistics from the University of Toronto, worked as a data scientist dealing with big sequencing data in cancer research, and been part of many high impact cancer research publications and computational developments that aim to improve cancer prognosis and enhance patients' quality of life.
Fouad is also a very active member in the teaching community. He has taught a variety of bioinformatics workshops in Toronto, New York, Montreal and Brazil that helped scientists learn programming and data analysis skills. In addition, he has extensive teaching experience through teaching statistics courses at Seneca College and tutoring high school students in the subjects of mathematics and statistics.
Fouad believes that one course CAN change a career, as it did for him. He is very excited to share his knowledge and passion with all the students joining The Coding Hive.
Michelle Chan-Seng-Yue, Instructor
Michelle is a Research Associate at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre studying acute lymphoblastic leukemia. She has been working in the field of bioinformatics, the computational analysis of biological data, for over 9 years and has a strong background in high throughput sequencing. She is also a professor at Seneca College teaching data analysis as part of the Bioinformatics certificate program.
Over the years she has gained strong computational skills including programming in perl and R, data processing and visualization. She is excited to be involved in The Coding Hive and can’t wait to meet motivated young individuals.
Cindy Yao, Instructor
Cindy lived in Shanghai and Vancouver prior to settling in Toronto for university and work. She obtained a Honours Bachelor’s Degree in Human Biology at the University of Toronto. During her final year of university, she became fascinated by the concept of combining computational work with understanding genomics data.
She went on to pursue her Master's degree at the Department of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto. She is now working as a data scientist in a research institute, developing biomarkers that improve cancer prognosis. She has over 6 years of experience working with R and big data visualization.
Transitioning into a more computational framework was difficult for her at the beginning but from this experience, she has acquired the skill of understanding complex topics and breaking them down into simpler terms. She is excited to be joining The Coding Hive and to share some of her experiences and insights with the students.
Veronica Craine, Instructor
Veronica has always been fascinated by statistical and mathematical tools and techniques which can be used to solve numerous real life problems. After obtaining a M.A. in Applied Statistics from York University, it was a summer semester studying in Finland amongst interdisciplinary professionals that sparked her interest in biology. Afterwards she completed a M.Sc. in Biostatistics from the University of Victoria, with research focusing on applications to cancer patients.
She continued her research at OICR and was trained in bioinformatics techniques. Since 2013, Veronica has contributed to a multitude of genomic megaprojects, to developing in-house R software packages, and to creating biomarkers using machine learning techniques.
Veronica enjoys teaching and over the years has participated in running mathematics workshops for elementary school students, tutored math and stats to high school students, and was a teaching assistant and guest lecturer in University. She continues to provide statistical support as well as mentorship to new hires and co-ops at OICR.
Veronica is excited to inspire and be inspired at The Coding Hive.
Veronica's LinkedIn Page
Katie Houlahan, Instructor
Katie started her training as a chemist earning an Honours Bachelor’s Degree in Chemical Biology at McMaster University. Early on in her degree she was introduced to the world of computational biology; first through an internship at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research where she worked on an international collaboration to evaluate machine learning methods to detect cancer causing mutations. Excited by the application of machine learning in healthcare, she next worked on methods to predict cancer drug sensitivity alongside experts at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the Oregon Health & Science University.
Now, Katie is a PhD student in the Department of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto studying the genetic underpinnings of prostate cancer. She is both a Vanier Scholar as well as Vector Institute Postgraduate Affiliate and is excited to share her journey and experience.