Meet the Faculty: Will Hsiao

April 01, 2022
Print

Meet Will Hsiao, Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) Associate Professor. We interviewed him to learn more about his work with genomics, informatics, knowledge engineering, and students.

Read the transcript of the conversation here

Will Hsiao

Dr. William Hsiao joined FHS at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in September 2020. He is also: an affiliated scientist at the BC Centre for Disease Control Public Health Laboratory (BCCDC PHL) and at Canada’s Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre; a genomic consultant with the BC Ministry of Agriculture Animal Health Centre; a principle investigator with The Centre for Infectious Disease Genomics and One Health; co-lead of the IRIDA (Integrated Rapid Infectious Disease Analysis) Consortium; and, a founding member of the Canadian COVID-19 Genomics Network (CanCoGeN). Prior to joining FHS, Dr. Hsiao was the chief bioinformatician and a senior scientist at the BCCDC PHL for 8 years and a clinical associate professor at the University of British Columbia. 

Dr. Hsiao obtained his PhD in the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at SFU followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Genome Sciences at University of Maryland School of Medicine. During his formal training, his research focused on microbial genomics and metagenomics. During his time at the BCCDC PHL, he incorporated data science and knowledge engineering into his research and developed expertise in public health data sharing, integration, and harmonization. With experience conducting and applying genomics and data science research both in academia and in government laboratories (public health and animal health), Dr. Hsiao brings to FHS a special perspective on integrating basic and applied research to improve our public health system.