"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge" Proverbs 1:7, The Bible

Welcome! My name is Martin Ester, and I am a Professor of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia. I got my Diplom (M.Sc.) in Computer Science from University of Dortmund, Germany, in 1984 and my Ph.D. in Computer Science from ETH Zurich, Switzerland, in 1990.

I am a co-director of the Databases and Data Mining Laboratory and member of the Omics Data Science Research Cluster. My research interests are in Data Mining and Machine Learning, in particular causal pattern discovery, transfer learning, network analysis, and recommender systems. Much of my research is driven by bio-medical applications such as patient stratification and drug response prediction. Our methods are typically based on Probabilistic Graphical Models and Deep Neural Networks.

Since my move to Vancouver in 2001, I am enjoying "Beautiful BC" and especially the many hiking trails around the Vancouver area. Our campus lies in the middle of the "wilderness" of the Burnaby Mountain conservation area, and I am commuting to and from work on my mountain bike.

Check out my website for further information about my research, teaching and service!