Athan Zovoilis

Position: Assistant Professor; Canada Research Chair in RNA Bioinformatics and Genomics

Institute: Southern Alberta Genome Sciences Centre, Deptartment of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Lethbridge

Role with AMR - One Health Consortium: Principal Investigator

Dr. Athan Zovoilis is an Assistant Professor of Bioinformatics at the University of Lethbridge, which he joined from Harvard Medical School (USA) as a Canada Research Chair in RNA Bioinformatics and Genomics. He is the Director of the Southern Alberta Genome Sciences Center (SAGSC) as well as the academic director of SAGSC’s bioinformatics core facility and platform. He is also the academic lead of the $3M Genome Canada supported Alberta Bioinformatics Network (BioNet) that includes the three main Alberta research intensive Universities. Dr. Zovoilis’ research in RNA Bioinformatics and Genomics is inspired by the convergence of human genetics with recent advances in RNA biochemistry and computational sciences. It is at the intersection of these fields that Dr Zovoilis lab tackles complex research challenges to elucidate i) the complexity of the human non-coding genome and transcriptome, and ii) the role of non-coding RNAs in cellular stress and aging associated diseases such as cancer and dementia. Dr. Zovoilis has contributed to our understanding of the role of non-coding RNAs in cell function and human disease and his studies include leading author publications in Journals such as Science, EMBO J and Cell that have been highly influential and widely cited in the fields of RNA Genomics and Epigenomics. Dr Zovoilis is a physician with a background in Medical Genetics, a doctorate in Human Genetics from the University of Goettingen (Germany), postgraduate training in bioinformatics from the University of Manchester (UK), and expertise in bioinformatics of next generation sequencing from his time as research fellow at Vancouver Genome Sciences Centre (Canada) and Harvard Medical School (USA). He has also been a fellow of the European Molecular Biology Organization, a fellow of the German Research Foundation and member of The Cancer Genome Atlas Research Network and he is also member of the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neurosciences and the Alberta RNA Research and Training Institute. Epidemiology of Infectious Disease, Dairy Cattle, Antimicrobial Resistance.

Key Areas of Expertise: Bioinformatics, Genomics, Next-generation sequencing