Network names eight early-career data scientists as recipients of its 2025 Health Informatics & Data Scientist Awards

Eight promising, early-career researchers have been named recipients of the 2025 Health Informatics & Data Scientist Awards funded by the Marathon of Hope Cancer Centres Network. Each will receive between $40,000 and $80,000 to support groundbreaking research in precision oncology. 

This new injection of funding totaling $621,500 will support the creation and use of new computing technologies that analyze large amounts of cancer data generated through the Network. The projects all seek to improve our understanding of cancer to advance precision diagnostics and therapies for patients with hard-to-treat cancers, including glioblastoma, acute myeloid leukemia, myxoid liposarcoma and breast cancer.  

Winning researchers are based in British Columbia and Ontario. Notably, all awardees this year are women.

“Finding new ways to analyze big data from cancer patients is key to accelerating precision medicine in cancer,” says Dr. André Veillette, Network executive director. “These awards not only support the development of groundbreaking techniques and technologies to do this, but also provide an investment in up-and-coming professionals in this field, helping to position Canada as a leader in precision oncology now and in the future.” 

Sarah Hunt is a member of the Network’s Patient Working Group who was diagnosed with myxoid liposarcoma in 2017. She believes that this investment is crucial to getting us closer to the day when all cancer patients have access to precision oncology treatments, regardless of what cancer they have and where they live. 

“As a young adult with cancer, I am always excited to see investments in young researchers and new technologies that have the potential to transform the future of cancer care,” she says. “In particular, hearing that one of these projects focuses on Myxoid liposarcoma makes me hopeful. I am excited to learn how precision oncology can help change my own future, and those of people with rare and hard-to-treat cancers.”

The award recipients and their project titles are: 

• Kaytlin Andrews (Queen’s University) for Identifying Molecular and Cellular Features of Glioblastoma Recurrence and Invasion 
• Vivian Chu (Princess Margaret Cancer Centre) for Pan-cancer neoantigen discovery and functional immunogenicity prediction using integrative deep learning approaches
• Kristi Fourie (BC Cancer Research Institute) for Epigenomic Determinants of Clonal Evolution and Therapy Resistance in Acute Myeloid Leukemia
• Nour Hanafi (Princess Margaret Cancer Centre) for Leveraging copy-number informed genetic constraint for cancer driver discovery
• Phoebe Lombard (Princess Margaret Cancer Centres) for Hypoxia-driven spatial dynamics of transcriptional and epigenetic cell states in glioblastoma
• Sasha Main (Princess Margaret Cancer Centre) for Simultaneous cell-free whole genome and epigenome sequencing to advance precision medicine in breast cancer
• Huilin Niu (Western University) for Role of lipid metabolism in driving metastasis in liposarcoma
• Yahan Zhang (Princess Margaret Cancer Centre) for Gene expression prediction from cfMeDIP-seq data 

About the Health Informatics & Data Scientist Awards 

The Health Informatics & Data Scientist Awards provide outstanding young researchers in health informatics and related fields with funding to support high-quality research in precision oncology. The award is designed to support young researchers as they complete their studies and develop their careers, in close collaboration and mentorship with established MOHCCN funded teams. Researchers currently enrolled in graduate (Master and Ph.D.) and post-doctoral studies in the fields of health informatics, data analytics, data science, computational biology, bioinformatics, and related fields at Canadian institutions were invited to apply.