Work with us
The lab is part of a federal research centre, which affects the kinds of opportunities we can offer. We do not handle graduate admissions. You can still work with us through the Research Affiliate Program.
Students
We take undergraduate co-op students, summer students and honours project students, and co-supervise graduate students with university supervisors. Recent projects include pedigree visualization, genomic selection pipelines and real-time nanopore analysis.
The problems are a blend of mathematics, software engineering and genomics. You should have a background in either life sciences, computer science or mathematics, and be willing to work across the other two.
What matters is not how much code you can write by hand. It is critical thinking, an engineering mindset, and accountability for a result. If you can define the problem cleanly and stay with it until something actually works for a breeder, that is the job.
Breeders and research scientists
If you have a data problem, such as a pipeline that only runs on one person’s laptop, a genotype file you cannot join to your field book, or an analysis you would rather run yourself, that is the core of the job, not a favour. Get in touch early, rather than after the data is collected. The design decisions that make analysis easier are usually made before anything is sequenced.
Collaborations
We work with groups across AAFC, universities and industry on population genomics and breeding data. If your problem sits somewhere between genomics, mathematics and software engineering, that is generally where we are most useful.
Getting in touch
Email tayab.soomro@agr.gc.ca. For student enquiries, say what you want to work on and roughly when you are available. Include a CV with student enquiries.
For project enquiries, one paragraph about the question and one about the available data are enough to get started.
What happens next. We read every enquiry. If there is a fit, we will suggest a short conversation about the question, the data and timing.