Our People - Bioinformatics

Research Interests:

• Health informatics

• Clinical problem solving, reasoning, and decision making

• Cognitive methodologies for the analysis of human computer interaction, knowledge acquisition, and medical expertise

• Cognitive aspects of computerized clinical practice guidelines

ResearchGate

Google Scholar

Research Interests:

• Molecular function prediction, design (proteins, DNA)

• Computational genomics

• Evolutionary bioinformatics and computational biology

[WCMR] June 18, 2018, receives Thermo Fisher Scientific Award

[Daily Bulletin] June 1, 2018, 11 CBB Members Named Outstanding Performance Award Winners

[Waterloo Stories] January 26, 2018 "Scientists find new kind of botox"

[Science Direct] August 10, 2018 "Revealing the atomistic details behind the binding of B7–1 to CD28 and CTLA-4: A comprehensive protein-protein modelling study"

[Nature] August 27, 2019 "Comprehensive in vitro characterization of PD-L1 small molecule inhibitors"

Research interests: 

• GTP-dependent phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinases
• IgA1 protease family of bacterial proteases

Research Interests:

• Methionine chemistry and biochemestry (amino acid methionine and its roles in proteins, cellular pathways and its functions)

• Bionanomaterials, bionanotechnology (for novel drug carriers, molecular foundations for nanodevices)

• Medicinal chemistry

• Enzymology
• Bioorganic chemistry
• Protein structure and function

ResearchGate

[Daily Bulletin] June 1, 2018, 11 CBB Members Named Outstanding Performance Award Winners

Research Interests:

• Microbial diversity and function at contaminated sites (primarily municipal landfills)
• DNA, RNA, and protein (meta-omics) sequences
• Environment remediation
• Impacts of human activities on the environment

LinkedIn

ResearchGate

Google Scholar

Canada Research Chair in Environmental Microbiology [Canada Research Chair Profile]

[YouTube] October 23, 2015 "Piecing life together - microbial diversity and function through meta-omic analyses"

[Waterloo Stories] April 12, 2016 "New tree of life may hold clues to cleaning up pollution"

Research Interests:

• Design/discovery of potential therapeutics to target various diseases
• Understanding the structure and pharmacology of membrane proteins
• Development of in silico methods/tools for sequence, structure and functional analysis
• Inferring the structure-function evolution of proteins
• Protein engineering for biotechnology and pharmaceutical applications

[American Chemical Society] January 23, 2012 "Exploring Inhibitor Release Pathways in Histone Deacetylases Using Random Acceleration Molecular Dynamics Simulations"

[Wiley Online Library] July 27, 2013 "Ligand release mechanisms and channels in histone deacetylases"

[Royal Society of Chemistry] December 19, 2013 "A steered molecular dynamics mediated hit discovery for histone deacetylases"

[Nature Methods] May 8, 2017 "ModelFinder: fast model selection for accurate phylogenetic estimates"

[Royal Society of Chemistry] October 24, 2017 "Reverse engineering: transaminase biocatalyst development using ancestral sequence reconstruction"

Research Interests:

• Bioinformatics tools (protein structures, genome mapping, conducting homology searches)

• Protein structure prediction, and automated NMR protein structure determination

• Stem cell image recognition

• Deep learning, natural language processing and automated conversation, AI

Google Scholar

Canada Research Chair in Bioinformatics [Canada Research Chair Profile]

The Royal Society of Canada Fellow

[Waterloo Stories] April 5, 2013 "RSVP: Responding to a need"

[Waterloo Stories] July 6, 2012 "Solving life's big issues, one question at a time"

Research Interests:

• Protein structure, functions, evolution (yeast, mammalian cell lines, plant-bacterial)

• Bioinformatics, systematics and protein evolution

• Protein structure and interaction modeling
• Protein expression pattern analysis
• Molecular genetics

LinkedIn

ResearchGate

Google Scholar

Research Interests:

• Proteins: energetics, kinetics, mechanisms, structure, dynamics, folding, function, evolution, engineering and design, thermodynamics, kinetics (ALS, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, prions, cancer)

• High resolution nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (fluorescence, CD, NMR, FTIR, DLS)

• Optical spectroscopies

• Bioinformatics and computational modelling

• Biocomputing and protein engineering

• Biophysical chemistry and biochemistry
• Bionanotechnology and biomaterials

​[Waterloo News] November 24, 2015 "New insights into protein structure could change the future of biomedicine"

[​Chemistry News] August 20, 2014 "Chemist Elizabeth Meiering takes on the ALS ice bucket challenge"

Research Interests:

• mHealth and wearable technology design
• Ubiquitous sensors for smart homes and remote patient monitoring
• Big data and health data analytics
• Technology to support longer independent living

LinkedIn

Research Gate

Google Scholar

[MaRS] April 26, 2018 "UbiLab team wins Healthy Behaviour Data Challenge"

Research Interests:

• Application of intelligent systems (hydrology, water resources, decision making in health, control of satellite communications, fault detection analysis)

• Optimization
• Mathematical programming, decision making under uncertainty
• Data mining

LinkedIn

ResearchGate

​Google Scholar

Research Interests:

• Machine learning and reasoning under uncertainty (artificial intelligence, computational statistics, decision and control theory)

• Health informatics (assistive technologies, behaviour recognition, smart walkers, Alzheimer’s monitoring)

• Natural language understanding (dialogue management, semantic analysis)

Google Scholar

[National Post] May 11, 2018, weighs in on how Google's A.I. personal assistant sparks concerns about future of communication

[The Record] May 8,2018, have ties with a new Montreal sports analytics research lab in Kitchener

[Markets Insider] February 5, 2018 "Borealis AI increases brain power by adding top AI talent"

[The Globe and Mail] February 4, 2018 "How we can leverage AI to bridge academia and business"

[Waterloo Stories] April 12, 2013 "Breaking the fall: Smart walker will help prevent injuries"

Research Interests:

• Protein structure, functions, and pharmaceuticals
• Type II Diabetes
• Bioinformatics, Systematics, and Evolution
• Molecular Genetics
• Microbiology

Google Scholar

[YouTube Lecture] September 30, 2015 "Glycosidases in human health and disease"

Alternate Location:

• Satellite Campus, UW-Schlegel Research Institute for Aging, Research Building, Sensors and Devices Lab

Research Interests:

• Bio-wearable electronics and systems
• Bio-electromagnetics, bio-technology, bio-sensors and energy harvesting systems
• RF/microwave/millimeter wave/Terahertz (THz) circuits and antenna systems
• Radio frequency (RF)/microwave packaging and Electromagnetic compatibility 
• (EMC)/Electromagnetic interface (EMI) analyses
• Vehicle and UAV wireless communications, navigation systems, and telematics systems
• Complex propagation and scattering phenomena
• Devices and novel electromagnetic materials and wireless sensors

LinkedIn 

ResearchGate

​Google Scholar

Awards:

• Top downloaded paper in Medical Physics (arXiv) – October 2019
• Best Imaging Paper, CVS, 2018
• ACM MobileHCI 2017 Best Worskshop Paper Award
• IEEE APS 2017 SPC Honorable Mention Paper Award
• IEEE Sensors Most Popular Article (March 2017)
• IEEE Sensors Annual Volume Cover Page

[CBB Events] November 15, 2019 "Professor Shaker organizes a Health Canada Regulatory insights Workshop"

[CNN] November 11, 2019 "Scientists develop sensor to save children and pets from hot car deaths"

[Waterloo News] October 29, 2019 "Advancing healthcare through innovative technology"

[Inside Digital Health] June 3, 2019 "Study: Radar Monitors Sleep with Accuracy Comparable to Current Standards"

[Waterloo News]  June 28, 2018 "AI and radar technologies could help diabetics manage their disease"

[Engineering News] June 28, 2018 "Researchers developing a prick-free glucose monitor"

[RD Magazine] June 28, 2018 "AI and Radar Technologies Could Help Diabetics Manage Their Disease" 

[Engineering News] July 5, 2016 "Waterloo wins big with tiny power device"

Research Interests:

• Data mining and bioinformatics

• Machine intelligence, computer vision, intelligence robotics

• Pattern recognition and discovery methods of genomic and proteomic data

• DNA sequencing, colon cancer and leukemia gene and data analysis

[YouTube Lecture] September 19, 2013 "Pattern discovery and analysis of genomic and proteomic data"

Office of Research - Technology Transfer & Commercialization:

• Biosequence Gap Pattern Discovery and Knowledge extraction and confirmation system
• Pattern Alignment Clustering to Reveal Functionality in Biosequences - WeMine™
• Multivariate Times Series Pattern Discovery in a Complex Continuous Industrial Process