Jeff Terry



Jeff Terry completed his M.Sc. at the University of Victoria and his M.D. at the University of Calgary. Jeff recently completed and submitted his Ph.D. thesis, entitled Synovial sarcoma: translating gene expression into patient care. Jeff is training to become a clinician-scientist himself, and while finishing his Anatomical Pathology residency in Laboratory Medicine at UBC, Jeff is continuing part-time to study stem cells in soft tissue sarcomas. Jeff's training has also been supported by the CIHR Clinical Research Initiative.



Suzanne Liu





Suzanne Liu is the Nielsen Lab's senior research technologist. She has Bachelor's and Master's degrees in medicine from China, and has extensive experience in molecular biology and virology.




Erika Mehl

Erika Mehl is the senior technologist at the Genetic Pathology Evaluation Centre, our tissue microarray research facility. She is an expert in laboratory organization, safety, immunohistochemistry, digital imaging microscopy, getting a good deal from lab supply vendors so donors' grant dollars go farther, and now ... she even hold's a pilot's license!

Dave Voduc


Dave Voduc is undertaking a research fellowship with the Genetic Pathology Evaluation Centre, under my direction. Dave recently completed his Royal College Certification in Radiation Oncology, and spends about a half of his time seeing patients through the BC Cancer Agency. His work focusses on patient outcome analysis: linking the expression of novel biomarkers detected by immunohistochemistry, in situ hybridization, and qRT-PCR to breast cancer treatment and outcome data, to help determine how these new diagnostic technologies can guide treatment decisions.


Hongwei Cheng



Hongwei Cheng is one of my senior research associates. He is a surgeon by training, and a clinician-scientist with experience in molecular orthopedic research at the University of Chicago. He is directing new translational research programs in myxoid liposarcoma and tenosynovial giant cell tumor.




Neal Poulin



Neal Poulin is my other senior research associate. He has a PhD in physics and postdoctoral experience in Vancouver and in the Netherlands. His main area of interest is in bioinformatics and he is involved in analyzing high throughput genomic data, including gene expression profiling from our collaborative research and from published datasets.



Le Su




Le Su is my Ph.D student. Le is studying the regulation of key growth and differentiation genes in synovial sarcoma, in collaboration with his cosupervisor - my colleague Michael Underhill. In doing so, he has elucidated pathways by which histone deactylase inhibitors have specific effects against this tumor type, work which has formed the basis for a planned NCIC-CTG clinical trial. Much of his work is taking place based at the UBC Biomedical Research Centre.





Jennifer Choo




Jennifer Choo is my newest PhD student, studying breast cancer. Her background is in molecular biology, but she has decided to take on a challenging program in clinical diagnostic and predictive biomarker investigations, using tissue microarray data.






marina pacheco


Marina Pacheco joined the team in 2009. Her goal is to become the first molecular pathologist for the National Oncology Institute of Panama. Marina is training under the auspices of the CIHR training program in molecular oncological pathology, learning clinical molecular pathology with Doug Horsman and translational sarcoma diagnostics in the Nielsen lab.










ALUMNI
Tracy Tan, junior technologist (2008-2009) went on to medical school at UBC.
Maggie Cheang, PhD student (2004-2008) won a major postdoctoral fellowship to study in the laboratory of Chuck Perou at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Joanna Lubieniecka, postdoctoral fellow (2004-2008) became a research associate at the iCORD centre.
Anne Nguyen, MSc (2007) became a clinical research assistant and then a student in the UBC MD program.
Sonja Steigen, sabbatical fellow / PhD student (2005-2006), completed her thesis and now a faculty position as a clinician-scientist pathologist at the University of Northern Norway.
Wanda Kwan, junior technologist (2004-2005) moved on to PhD studies at UCSF.



Last but not least, I should also mention the other really great people I work with who can also be considered either my employees or "trainees" in various ways: the Genetic Pathology Evaluation Centre team, the residents in the UBC Anatomical Pathology program, and the students in the UBC combined MD/PhD training program.


Last modified 2009.7.27

Back to Torsten's home page.