Group Leader, Instrumentation
Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre at BC Cancer
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
I am an engineer and physicist who, 25 years ago, made a sharp turn from semiconductors into genomics. I have mostly since then been Group Leader for Instrumentation at BCGSC, which has been a wonderful place to develop practical solutions for high throughput biology as well as creating novel medical devices. The primary focus has been automation for sequencing sample preparation and our group has been on the forefront of automating nucleic acid purification and library construction since the beginning of the NGS era. A highlight was the development in 2009 of automated DNA size selection for The Cancer Genome Atlas project, a technology commercialized in 2013, which is now part of Yourgene PLC. My lab has more recently turned our attention to high throughput tissue dissection to improve tumour content going into sequencing, a major remaining bottleneck in the biopsy to sequence pipeline. Our proximity to various hospitals has also unearthed interesting medical challenges, leading to the development of what is now the CurvaFix IM Implant for pelvic fixation, as well as various bespoke radiotherapy devices used at BC Cancer. Engineering is about building tools to solve problems but first you have to find the problems, and the clinic and clinical labs are a fruitful source of such things.
Disclosure information not submitted.
Automation for Tumour Sequencing at Scale.
Saturday, November 15, 2025
8:15 AM - 9:15 AM EST