معرفی
Dr. Faraz Hach is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia, with a primary appointment in the Department of Urologic Sciences. He is also a Senior Research Scientist at the Vancouver Prostate Centre located at Vancouver General Hospital. His research bridges computational algorithm design with biological problems in precision medicine, with a special focus on cancer genomics.
Dr. Hach received his B.Sc. in Computer Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in Iran, followed by M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Computing Science from Simon Fraser University, Canada. His doctoral work was recognized with the Governor General's Gold Medal for the best doctoral thesis at Simon Fraser University in 2014.
Dr. Hach's research focuses on computational genomics and biomolecular sequence analysis, particularly in the context of cancer. His lab develops novel high-performance algorithms for analyzing large, high-dimensional omics data produced by next-generation sequencing technologies. Current research directions include:
- Designing combinatorial algorithms for analyzing genomic structural variations and segmental duplications
- Developing computational methods for detecting aberrations in tissue and liquid biopsies to understand clonal evolution in cancer genomes
- Creating data structures and algorithms for compressing large quantities of sequencing data
- Working on standardization of genomic data formats through involvement with the MPEG-ISO sub-committee
Dr. Hach's publications demonstrate a strong trend toward developing computational tools that address specific challenges in cancer genomics and precision medicine. His work spans from fundamental algorithm development to clinical applications, with a particular emphasis on creating tools that improve sensitivity and accuracy while maintaining computational efficiency. Many of his recent publications focus on single-cell analysis, transcriptomic long-read sequencing, and structural variant detection in cancer genomes.
Dr. Hach has received several prestigious awards for his work, including:
- The Ian Lawson Van Toch Memorial Award for an outstanding paper at the 20th Annual International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology
- The Governor General's Gold Medal for the best doctoral thesis award from Simon Fraser University in 2014
Dr. Hach is actively involved in several major research consortia including the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) and the ICGC-TCGA Pan Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG). His earlier work on NGS mappings has been extensively used in the detection of copy number and structural variations in the 1000 Genome Project. He maintains an active research lab that develops numerous open-source software tools for genomic analysis, including Freddie, TKSM, scTagger, Genion, CircMiner, and HASLR.
Dr. Hach is available for graduate student supervision, with opportunities for M.Sc., PhD, PostDoc, and intern positions in his lab. His research has significant interdisciplinary components, bridging computer science, genomics, and clinical medicine.
