Gavin Ha

Gavin Ha, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Herbold Computational Biology Program within the Public Health Sciences Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. He also holds an appointment in the Human Biology Division and is a Member of the Translational Data Science Integrated Research Center (TDS IRC). His research focuses on computational cancer genomics and liquid biopsies for precision oncology applications.

Dr. Ha received his educational training from the University of British Columbia, where he earned his PhD in Bioinformatics in 2014 and a BSc in Computer Science and Microbiology in 2008.

Dr. Ha is a computational biologist whose research centers on developing and applying computational methods to profile cancer genomes from patient tumors and blood. His laboratory specializes in novel approaches to study cell-free DNA (circulating tumor DNA) through liquid biopsies. His work spans three main research areas: developing novel computational methods for cancer genome analysis, studying genomic alterations in cancer, and applying liquid biopsy techniques in precision medicine. His research has particular applications in prostate, breast, and lung cancers, with active collaborations at Fred Hutch and UW Medicine.

Dr. Ha's publication record shows a consistent focus on advancing liquid biopsy technologies and computational cancer genomics. His recent work has particularly emphasized molecular phenotyping of cancers using cell-free DNA, with significant contributions to prostate cancer and small cell lung cancer research. His interdisciplinary approach combines computational biology with clinical applications to develop non-invasive cancer diagnostics and monitoring tools.

The Ha Lab has developed innovative tools including PEARL for preeclampsia risk prediction from prenatal cell-free DNA screening and SCLCpheno-seq for small cell lung cancer subtyping. His laboratory maintains active collaborations with the labs of Dr. Peter Nelson and Dr. David MacPherson at Fred Hutch, as well as with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Cancer Research UK, and the National Cancer Institute.

Dr. Ha actively collaborates with researchers at Fred Hutch and UW Medicine to study various cancer types. His laboratory currently includes graduate student Mohamed Adil and has received funding from Fred Hutch, University of Washington, and multiple National Institutes of Health grants. He has mentored several researchers including Navonil De Sarkar, Robert Patton, Joseph Hiatt, and Anna-Lisa Doebley.