William Hsiao

Areas of interest

Dr. Hsiao leads an interdisciplinary group of researchers interested in studying infectious diseases through a One Health lens. The group combines knowledge engineering techniques and bioinformatics tool development to improve data sharing and integrated genomic analysis in public health. Dr. Hsiao’s team has developed several notable ontologies (GenEpiO.org and FoodOn.org) and ontology-driven tools to improve the extraction and re-use of biological data following FAIR principles. Dr. Hsiao is a co-lead of the IRIDA Consortium (www.irida.ca), a group of bioinformatics researchers building a high-quality, user-friendly genomic epidemiology analysis platform. He is also a founding member of the Canadian COVID-19 Genomics Network (CanCOGeN). Recognizing the One Health (interconnected) nature of many infectious diseases, Dr. Hsiao’s team collaborates extensively with researchers and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines in quantitative sciences, social sciences and medical and veterinary sciences with the aim of understanding the microbial world better and to improve the health and well-being of humans and animals.