Art Poon
Associate Professor
Postdoc: UCSD Center for AIDS Research, USA
PhD: University of California, San Diego, USA
MSc: University of British Columbia, Canada
Office: Health Sciences Addition H422
Phone: 519.661.2111 x87978
Email: apoon42@uwo.ca
Lab Website: http://github.com/PoonLab
Area of Study:
Bioinformatics, phylogenetics and the molecular epidemiology of human viruses
-virus evolution
-bioinformatics
-phylogenetics
-molecular evolution
-molecular epidemiology
-phylodynamics
-machine learning
Research Profile
My research focus is the design and implementation of new computational methods to reconstruct the spread and adaptation of viruses from their genomic diversity. Viruses evolve so rapidly that a single infection can become genetically unique within weeks or months of transmission. We can use this evolutionary diversification to characterize how a virus population has adapted to that patient's immune system; to detect "hotspots" of virus transmission in an epidemic in real time; and to reconstruct the historical spread of a virus in human populations. To accomplish this, we use a blend of techniques from mathematical modeling, phylogenetics, pattern recognition, open-source software development and high performance computing.
