Tracking infectious diseases across humans, animals, and the environment—and understanding how they evolve—requires strong epidemiological intelligence (epi-intel). Integrating pathogen genomic data with high-quality contextual information provides high-resolution epi-intel and accelerates research. This approach was used widely during the COVID-19 pandemic, yielding an unprecedented volume of data and a rapid expansion of knowledge. In this talk, I’ll describe our methods for data harmonization and integration, as well as the analytics and visualization tools we built. Through real-world case studies, I’ll show how collaboration can create a more integrated, effective data ecosystem for infectious-disease research.

What you'll learn in this session: 

  • Understand what makes genomic epidemiology a powerful way to study infectious diseases 
  • Appreciate why sharing of infectious disease epidemiological data is challenging
  • Appreciate how de-centralized but interoperable data ecosystem can address both FAIR and CARE Principles

About Our Speaker

Dr. William Hsiao
Associate Professor, MSHRBC Scholar, Simon Fraser University

Dr. William Hsiao is an associate professor at Simon Fraser University in the Faculty of Health Sciences. His research focuses on infectious disease genomics, bioinformatics, and data sciences. His academic and professional journey includes a Ph.D. from SFU in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Maryland’s Institute for Genome Sciences, and roles as a senior scientist and chief bioinformatician at the BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) Public Health Laboratory. At SFU, Dr. Hsiao leads an interdisciplinary team interested in developing novel solutions integrating genomics analysis and semantic web technologies to address One Health research challenges.
William Hsiao