About Us

David R. Goodlett is a bioanalytical chemist who has published over 280 papers generating an H-index of 80 with his colleagues. His research involves developing a better understanding of the lipid A structure-activity relationship. He is a tenured Professor at the University of Victoria where he is the Don and Eleanor Rix BC Leadership Chair in Biomedical & Environmental Proteomics and is Director of their Proteomics Centre. He was Professor at the Universities of Washington (2004-2012) and Maryland-Baltimore (2013-2020) as well as Director of Proteomics at the Institute for Systems Biology (2000-2003). He was a Finland Distinguished Professor (2012-2016) at the University of Turku and is an Editor at Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry for Wiley-Blackwell. He is an organizer of the Mass Spectrometry in Biotechnology and Medicine summer school and is also a visiting Professor at the International Centre for Cancer Vaccine Science at the University of Gdansk where the focus is on neoantigen sequencing.

Dr. Leonard Foster is Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Michael Smith Laboratories at University of British Columbia (UBC). He completed his undergraduate studies at Simon Fraser University and his doctoral degree in cell biology and biochemistry at the University of Toronto. He then studied mass spectrometry and proteomics with Matthias Mann at the University of Southern Denmark. Dr. Foster’s research revolves around the application of mass spectrometry-based proteomics to study host-pathogen interactions. As an independent investigator at UBC, Dr. Foster has published over 130 papers and trained over 30 undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral fellows. He remains active in outreach and frequently engages the public on various aspects of human health and honey bee biology.

Dr. Schibili is the Associate Director of the Pan-Canadian Proteomics Centre, as well as of the UVic-Genome BC Proteomics Centre (PC). After graduating from the University of Victoria with a Bachelor of Science, David went on to obtain his PhD from the University of Calgary in Protein Biochemistry, undertaking a post-doctoral fellowship at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Grenoble, France. Following this, he was a Project Manager at the University of Western Ontario, where he established a new high-throughput proteomics facility. David then obtained his MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario, specializing in Health Sciences. Since then, David worked at the Ontario Genomics Institute and was the General Manager of Business Improvement Group (BIG) Funding Inc. prior to his role at UVic.

Dr. Leanne Wybenga-Groot is the Facility Manager of SPARC BioCentre (Molecular Analysis) at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids). She completed her BSc and MSc degrees in Biochemistry at McMaster University and obtained her PhD from the University of Toronto in Molecular Genetics under the supervision of Drs. Tony Pawson and Frank Sicheri. Dr. Wybenga-Groot completed a CIHR Fellowship in the lab of Dr. Jane McGlade at The Hospital for Sick Children. From there, she became a Project Manager at SPARC BioCentre. In her current role as Facility Manager of the SickKids node, she oversees the day to day operations of the mass spectrometry, metabolism analysis, and amino acid analysis services. In addition, Leanne is actively involved in the scientific community and enjoys contributing to career workshops, conferences, science fairs, and mentoring.

Anne-Claude Gingras is the Canada Research Chair in Functional Proteomics, the Lea Reichmann Chair in Cancer Proteomics and a Senior Investigator at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Sinai Health System. A Full Professor in the department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto, she also serves as deputy editor of Molecular and Cellular Proteomics and as a co-director of the Network Biology Collaborative Centre (NBCC). Her lab focuses on the study of signalling pathways using systematic approaches and the development of quantitative proteomics technologies. She has developed computational tools that enable better analysis and visualization of proteomics results, and contribute to training the next generation of proteomics researchers. Using the tools that she developed, her group has identified new protein complexes and signaling components that provide a better understanding of perturbations associated with cancer and rare diseases. Dr. Gingras has published >250 research articles and review articles that have already been cited >43,000 times. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, an elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), and was recently awarded the CSMB Jeanne Manery Fisher Memorial Lecture (2019), the HUPO Discovery Award (2019), and the CNPN Tony Pawson Award (2020).

Dr. Moran is Senior Scientist in the Cell Biology program at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and Professor in Molecular Genetics at University of Toronto. He serves as Scientific Director of the SPARC BioCentre at SickKids and is an Affiliate Scientist at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Toronto. He obtained his PhD in Biochemistry at the National Cancer Institute of Canada (NCIC) Cancer Research Laboratory at the University of Western Ontario. He completed a four-year NCIC Fellowship at Mount Sinai Hospital (Toronto) under the tutelage of Prof. Tony Pawson. Dr. Moran is a devoted cancer researcher and sits on the Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) Advisory Council on Research. He holds the Canada Research Chair in Molecular Signatures. Dr. Moran currently serves as President of the Canadian National Proteomics Network (CNPN).

Dr. Eric Bonneil is the Facility Manager of the Montreal node of the Pan-Canadian Proteomics Center at the Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer of Université de Montreal. He conducted his BSc. Degree in Chemistry at Université du Havre and his MSc.in Organic Chemistry at Universite Rouen. He completed his Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry at Universite de Montreal and conducted his FCAR fellowship at NRCC’s Institute for Biological Sciences in Ottawa. He then became senior scientist and program manager at Caprion Pharmaceuticals. In his current role as Facility Manager, at the Montreal Node he oversees the daily operations and maintenance of the proteomics unit including data collection and analysis for protein modifications and immunopeptidomic analyses. He also contributes to scientific workshops, conferences and trainees mentoring.

Dr. Karen Colwill is a Staff Scientist at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute (LTRI) and Manager of the Network Biology Collaborative Centre (NBCC, nbcc.lunenfeld.ca). She was appointed to the Canadian National Proteomics Network Board of Directors in 2018.  She has a strong background in molecular biology and proteomics having trained with Dr. Tony Pawson at the LTRI for her PhD and with Dr. Brenda Andrews at the University of Toronto for her post-doctoral work. After her academic studies, she gained industrial experience at MDS-Proteomics where she managed a team dedicated to cell biology and protein purification for mass spectrometry. At the LTRI since 2002, she has managed several large-scale proteomics projects and contributed to the development and maintenance of laboratory information management systems including ProHits for mass spectrometry analysis. At the NBCC, Karen works with collaborating scientists and coordinates new technology development from initial concept to delivery of standardized procedures available to users.

Dr. Pierre Thibault is Professor in the Department of Chemistry and principal investigator at the Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer of Université de Montreal where he also directs the Montreal node of the Pan-Canadian Proteomics Center. He obtained his Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from Université de Montreal and conducted his postdoctoral fellowship at the National Research Council of Canada (NRCC) under the guidance of Robert Boyd. He has 30 years of experience in bioanalytical mass spectrometry, proteomics and protein chemistry from his combined work experience in government (NRCC), industry (Caprion Pharmaceuticals) and academic laboratories. His research program in mass spectrometry-based proteomics is focused on the further understanding of molecular mechanisms and post-translational modifications, which regulate the function and translocation of proteins involved in immunity and signaling in cancer cells. He authored more than 260 publications, and serves as editor of the journals Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry and Molecular & Cellular Proteomics.

Dr. Christoph Borchers is a recognized leader in the development of mass spectrometry-based methods for protein quantification using MRM, having published over 300 peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals. He is the founder and director of the McGill-Lady Davis Institute Integrated Proteomics Program at the Jewish General Hospital, McGill University, where he is a full professor. He received his BS, MSc, and PhD degrees from the University of Konstanz, Germany. From 2006 to 2019, Dr. Borchers was a professor and the Director of the University-Genome British Columbia Proteomics Centre at UVic where he held the Rix BC Leadership Chair in Biomedical and Environmental Proteomics. He promotes proteomics research and education through the BCPN (Executive Committee Member) the HUPO (International Council Member), the CNPN (Member), and the CAHS (Fellow).

Jason Rogalski is the operations manager of the Michael Smith Labs Proteomics Core Facility at the University of British Columbia. After graduating from the UBC department of Chemistry in 2002, he worked as a mass spectrometry research technician, becoming the manager of the Multi-User Facility for Functional Proteomics at UBC (2005-2011), and the Centre for Blood Research Mass Spectrometry Suite (2009-2011), both of which then joined with the UBC Proteomics Core Facility, where he became operations manager as of 2014.  He oversees fee for service proteomics on campus at the University, including experimental planning, data analysis, instruction and instrument maintenance. He has published more than 25 papers and through the Proteomics Core Facility and the Pan-Canadian Proteomics Centre, aids more than 100 projects per year.

Dr. René Zahedi is the Associate Director of the Segal Cancer Proteomics Centre at the Jewish General Hospital. He received his PhD at the University of Wuerzburg, Germany, in 2008, working on phosphoproteomics of human platelets. He has been a junior (2010) and later permanent senior PI (2014) at the Leibniz-Institute for Analytical Sciences – ISAS – in Dortmund, Germany, focusing on the analysis of clinical samples and PTMs using mass spectrometry. He has been a speaker at the Bioanalytics Study Group of the German Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (GBM) from 2010-2017 and has been member of the Education Committee of the European Proteomics Association (EuPA) from 2015-2017. End of 2017, Dr. Zahedi joined the Segal Cancer Proteomics Centre. He has published more than 120 papers on protein mass spectrometry.