I am a master’s student at the University of Toronto working with Dr. Leon French and Dr. Etienne Sibille at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health hospital in Toronto, ON. Under their guidance and expertise and with my background in computer science, I am able to perform various computational analyses on the increasing amounts of open science data. Excitingly, my findings can help propel future neuroscience and mental health research which has become increasingly more important.

Depression has now become the world’s largest contributor to disability and suicide cases. Unfortunately, there is still no clear understanding of the underlying cause of this disease. In my project, I aim to prioritize the list of genes from the largest genome-wide association study of depression (Howard, 2019) and identify the possible cell-types and brain structures predominantly affected by the disease. These results aim to provide guidance for future studies of depression and, together, achieve a better understanding of the underlying genetic causes of depressive disorders. By influencing more collaborative research, we can efficiently develop more effective treatments to help the millions of people who are suffering from a debilitating disease worldwide.