Background:

Michael Brudno is the Scientific Director of the Centre for Computational Medicine at the Hospital for Sick Children and an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. After receiving a BA in Computer Science and History from UC Berkeley, he received his PhD from the Computer Science Department of Stanford University, working on algorithms for whole genome alignments. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley and was a Visiting Scientist at MIT before starting his position at Toronto. Michael Brudno’s main research interest is the development of computational methods for the analysis of genomic datasets, especially High Throughput Sequencing data, including methods for the discovery of structural and copy-number polymorphisms and other genomic variation, identification of functional variants, and visualization of genomic data. He is also interested in the capture of precise clinical data from clinicians using effective user interfaces. He has also worked on comparative genomics, molecular evolution, and cloud computing. He is the recipient of the Ontario Early Researcher Award and the Sloan Fellowship, as well as the Outstanding Young Canadian Computer Scientist Award.