The Team

Dr. Nicolette Fonseca, Ph.D.

Nicolette completed her BSc and MSc in Microbiology at Goa University (India) and her Ph.D. in Microbiology and immunology at the University of British Columbia. Her doctoral thesis investigated the regulation of the CD4+ T cell response to influenza infection. During this time, she became interested in the clinical and translational aspects of immunology research, especially for the treatment of ‘cold’ tumours such as prostate cancer. She was also keen on further developing her bioinformatics skills which led to her joining the Wyatt lab team in September 2019. Her current projects seek to characterize genomic alterations in prostate cancer-derived lung metastases and to dissect the immune cell infiltrate in prostate tumours with DNA repair defects. 

Dr. Gillian Vandekerkhove, M.Sc Ph.D.

Gillian obtained her MSc from the University of Toronto in 2015 and joined the Wyatt laboratory in 2016. In 2022, she completed her Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia on the use of circulating tumour DNA in metastatic bladder cancer. She received several awards during her studies, including a three-year CIHR CGS-D scholarship. Gillian is continuing her research as a postdoctoral fellow, leveraging tissue and liquid biopsies to study the molecular landscape of aggressive bladder and prostate cancer, and relating genomic changes with clinical outcomes. She is a co-investigator on our recently awarded 2021 CIHR project grant titled “Refining the clinical utility of circulating tumour DNA in metastatic bladder cancer”.

Dr. Sofie Tolmeijer, Ph.D.

Sofie obtained her BSc in Biology and MSc in Biomedical Sciences at Leiden University (The Netherlands). During her Ph.D. at the Radboud University Medical Center (The Netherlands), she studied the potential of serial circulating tumour DNA measurements to monitor treatment response in prostate cancer, bladder cancer and melanoma. Keen on improving her bioinformatic skills and broadening her knowledge of circulating tumour DNA technologies, she joined the Wyatt Lab in July 2023. Sofie’s research involves the investigation of homologous recombination repair (HRR) defects in prostate cancer and the use of serial liquid biopsy during novel therapeutic strategies for prostate cancer.

Cameron Herberts

Cameron completed a BSc in biophysics at the University of British Columbia and joined the Wyatt laboratory in 2018 to pursue his PhD. His graduate work involved establishing novel ctDNA analysis methods for predictive and prognostic (epi)genomic biomarker development, and leveraging serial ctDNA to discover treatment resistance mechanisms to standard-of-care drugs for metastatic prostate cancer. Cameron has received several awards during his PhD, including a three-year CIHR CGS-D scholarship and merit awards from AACR and ASCO. He is extending his tenure in the Wyatt laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow.

Asli Munzur

Asli finished her B.Sc. in biology at the University of British Columbia and started her graduate studies in genome sciences at the Wyatt Lab. She is interested in various aspects of prostate cancer, including using various bioinformatics methods to characterize the genomic changes during tumour progression. Asli is partially funded by the BC Cancer Rising Stars Award, worth $70,000 over 2 years.

Wilson Tu

Wilson is a Master’s student in the Computer Science program at the University of British Columbia and is currently co-supervised by Dr. Jiarui Ding. Wilson mainly focuses on Computational Biology, particularly in applying probabilistic models in sequencing data. He is currently working on the spinal metastasis project to study the cancer microenvironment.

Yi Jou (Ruby) Liao

Ruby earned her B.Sc. in Computational and Systems Biology at UCLA. She became a M.Sc. student at the Wyatt Lab in 2023, following a rotation as part of the UBC Genome Science and Technology Research Rotation Award. Ruby is broadly interested in leveraging computational methods to characterize and exploit potential vulnerabilities in prostate cancer.

Sarah Ng

Sarah graduated with her BSc. in Combined Honours Microbiology & Immunology and Computer Science at the University of British Columbia in 2022. She carried out a 16-month co-op term with the Wyatt Lab during her undergraduate degree inferring gene expression from nucleosome positioning in prostate cancer ctDNA, and is now continuing her research as a bioinformatician. She is currently working on correlating genomic alterations with clinical outcomes for various treatments of advanced prostate cancer, leveraging serial ctDNA samples from clinical trials around the world.

Cecily Bernales

Cecily is a laboratory research assistant who is mainly responsible for library construction and targeted sequencing of liquid and tissue biopsy samples from metastatic prostate cancer patients accrued to our province-wide collection program.

Chris Tam

Chris is a senior student at Simon Fraser University studying molecular biology and biochemistry. He is responsible for blood processing and DNA extractions of liquid and tissue biopsy samples from prostate, bladder, testicular and kidney cancer patients accrued to our province-wide collection program.