Students & Trainees

Tim Lee is a Distinguished Scientist who works specifically on early skin cancer detection and epidemiologic research on skin cancer. Tim’s research interests include medical image analysis, artificial intelligence, polarization speckle, computer-aided diagnosis, and risk and prognosis factors of skin cancer.

Research Interests:

• Polarization speckle: in vivo skin cancer screening technique
• Artificial intelligence and computer aided diagnostic algorithms for analyzing skin images
• Risk and prognosis factors for melanoma

Dr. Samuel Aparicio (BM, BCh, PhD, FRCPath, FRSC) is the Nan & Lorraine Robertson Chair in Breast Cancer Research, holds the Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Molecular Oncology and Therapeutics, and is the recipient of the 2014 Aubrey J Tingle Prize. He is a Distinguished Scientist in the Department of Basic and Translational Research at BC Cancer Research, part of the Provincial Health Services Authority, and a Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at UBC. 

Dr. Marra is a UBC Professor of Medical Genetics and the Michael Smith Laboratories. Formerly Head of Medical Genetics (UBC) and co-founder and past Director of Canada’s Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre for more than two decades, Dr. Marra is known for his work in genomics and precision cancer genomic medicine.

Dr. Stuart Peacock holds the Leslie Diamond Chair in Cancer Survivorship in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University. He is Co-Director of the Canadian Centre for Applied Research in Cancer Control (ARCC) and a Distinguished Scientist at BC Cancer. From 2017-22, he was Head of the Department of Population Health Sciences (formerly known as Cancer Control Research) at BC Cancer, having served as Deputy Head from 2012-16. In 2020, he was inducted as a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.

Dr. Florian Kuchenbauer received his M.D. education at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, Germany in 2001 and completed an M.D. thesis at the Max-Planck-Institute for Psychiatry in 2002. He then started residency training at the Department of Hematology/Oncology, Klinikum Grosshadern, Munich, Germany (2001-2004) before obtaining a PhD degree at the Terry Fox Laboratory, BC Cancer and Department of Experimental Medicine, University of British Columbia under the supervision of Dr. Keith Humphries (2005-2009).

My lab is using functional genomics, molecular biology, biochemistry, and imaging in both the yeast model and cultured human cells to study fundamental mechanisms of genome maintenance and stability. Failure to maintain genome integrity leads to mutations that can promote tumour formation. Normal genome maintenance mechanisms can be overwhelmed by carcinogen exposure, or the presence of germline or somatic variants that induce genomic instability.

Dr. Andrew Weng pursued his undergraduate studies in Biological Sciences at Stanford University before earning both MD and PhD degrees from the University of Chicago/Pritzker School of Medicine. His professional journey continued with residency training in Anatomic Pathology and a fellowship in hematopathology, followed by postdoctoral research at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Dr. Rahmim is Professor of Radiology, Physics and Biomedical Engineering at the University of British Columbia (UBC), as well as Distinguished Scientist and Provincial Medical Imaging Physicist at BC Cancer. He received his MSc in condensed matter physics and PhD in medical imaging physics at UBC.

Dr. Rachel Murphy is a Senior Scientist at the BC Cancer and an Associate Professor at the School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia. She received her PhD in Nutrition and Metabolism from the University of Alberta and completed a post doctorate in the Laboratory of Epidemiology, and Population Sciences at the National Institute on Aging in the United States. Her research program aims to advance the understanding of relationships between diet, nutrition and chronic disease, particularly cancer.

Dr Leandro Venturutti began his scientific career at the Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry (University of Buenos Aires, Argentina), where he studied the structure and function of a protein lost in the hereditary neurodegenerative disease Friedreich Ataxia. Pursuing his profound interest in biomedical sciences and mechanisms of disease, he moved on to the cancer research field for his PhD studies.

Dr. Carol Chen was born in Taipei, Taiwan and grew up in Calgary, Alberta. She obtained her PhD in the lab of Dr. Matthew Lorincz at the University of British Columbia, where she studied chromatin mechanism of transcription, specifically looking at histone phosphorylation. She then completed a post-doc fellowship in the lab of Dr. Nada Jabado at McGill University, where she studied histone mutations found in cancer and germline developmental disorders. In 2023, she joined Terry Fox Laboratory at BC Cancer to start her own independent research group.

Professor ǀ OBMS ǀ Faculty of Dentistry 

Director, BC Oral Cancer Prevention Program: http://www.bccancer.bc.ca/health-professionals/clinical-resources/oral

Dr. Jennifer Ritonja is a Scientist at the BC Cancer Research Centre.

Dr. Crome joined BC Cancer in 2025 after serving as a Senior Scientist at the University Health Network and Associate Professor at the University of Toronto, where she held a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Tissue-Specific Immune Tolerance. There, Dr. Crome led single-cell profiling efforts defining tissue-resident immune programs in the human kidney, transplantation, and inflammatory disease, including the first comprehensive single-cell atlas of healthy human kidney.