Team members with ICGC-PPCG Colleagues in 2024
Senior Research Fellow
Dr Weerachai Jaratlerdsiri
A senior Computational Biologist, Weerachai is passionate about interrogating “Big Data” genomics through the application of advanced computational techniques and machine learning to uncover the role of genetic and environmental factors on human evolution and adaptation to disease, with a focus on prostate cancer and associated tumour evolution.
Research Fellow
Research Fellow
Dr Pamela Soh
Having completed her PhD in Dog population disease genetics (2021), Pam has turned her attention to humans and prostate cancer, applying her skills as a Population Genomicist to identifying inherited and somatic genetic variants associated with prostate cancer risk and adverse outcomes.
Dr Kazzem Gheybi (Qeybi)
As a trained medical practitioner, Kazzem completed his PhD in Cancer Epidemiology (2022). Kazzem’s research is focusing on different epidemiological risk factors of prostate cancer, specifically related to health disparities, while learning new skills in cancer genetics.
Dr Md. Mehedi Hasan
Having completed his PhD in prawn genetics (2022), Mehedi joined the team to head research focused on Cancer Genome Complexity using state-of-the-art technologies such as Optical Genome Mapping (OGM) and long-read sequencing. Mehedi is uncovering clinically actionable large structural variations acquired during tumour development.
Research Fellow
Research Fellow
Dr Korawich Uthayopas
Our newest postdoctoral researcher, Korawich joined the team in October 2024 after completing his PhD in transcriptomic informatics and machine learning from the University of Queensland. Korawich will lead the teams efforts in RNA-sequence analytics associated with prostate tumour proression and disease outcomes.
PhD Student
Sarah Battle (MSc)
Sarah, with both laboratory and management expertise, including the National Health Services (NHS) in UK, is Managing the major projects, including the US DoD-funded HEROIC PCaPH Africa1K Consortium , as well as facilitating and supporting the lab members and both the SAPCS, NamSAPCS and EAPCS resource management.
Project Manager
Jue Jiang
Jue has extensive expertise in high performance compute (HPC) and big data genomic analytics and heads the Data Management in the lab, while pursuing her PhD (registered October 2023), with a USA Prostate Cancer Foundation (Hayes Lab) Scholarship.
Title: Revealing genomic processes associated with aggressive prostate cancer using big data analytics
Supervisors: Professor Vanessa Hayes, Dr Weerachai Jaratlerdsiri
Ruotian Huang
Having completed a first class honours in the role of telomere lengths associated with prostate cancer health disparities, Ruotian registered for a PhD in October 2023, being awarded a University of Sydney International Scholarship.
Title: Determining the role of telomere lengths in human and cancer evolution.
Supervisors: Professor Vanessa Hayes, Dr Weerachai Jaratlerdsiri
PhD Student
PhD Student
Kanping Zhou
Having completed a first class honours in the role of germline variants of the hypoxia pathway in driving prostate cancer health disparities, Kangping registered for a PhD in October 2024, being awarded a USA Prostate Cancer Foundation (Hayes Lab) Scholarship.
Title: Defining the genomic basis for hypoxia in prostate cancer health disparities and human adatation.
Supervisors: Professor Vanessa Hayes, Dr Pamela Soh, Professor Robert Bristow (University of Manchester UK)
Visiting Senior Research Fellow
Visiting Research Fellow
Dr Avraam Tapinos
Avraam is a senior postdoctoral research in the lab of Professor David Wedge at the University of Manchester, UK. A computational biologist, with expertise in data science and machine learning, Avraam is working with the Hayes Lab to uncover ethnic-based disparities in the complexities of prostate tumour evolution.
Dr Abraham Gihawi
A Prostate Cancer UK Fellow and Postdoctoral researcher at the University of East Anglia UK, with Professors Colin Cooper and Daniel Brewer, Abe is a bioinformatician specializing in prostate cancer microbial genomics and is working closely with the Hayes Lab to investigate the role of microbes in associated health disparities.
Visiting Research Fellow
Alice Adams joins the team in 2022 as a Visiting undergrad Student from the University of Bath UK
Dr Tingting Gong
A former PhD student from the Hayes Lab (graduated 2021), Tingting is a postdoctoral researcher at the Human Phenome Insitute, Fudan University, China. Merging her engineering and computational skills, Tingting is working with the Hayes Lab to unravel genomic complexities in prostate tumour genomes, with a focus on using short-read sequencing data to infer structural variation and in turn ethnic disparity.
Visiting PhD Student
Maphuti Tebogo Lebelo
Tebogo is a PhD student at the University of Pretoria, South Africa and a Hayes Lab affiliate student.
Title: Hormone biology and genetics and its association with aggressive prostate cancer in men of African ancestry.
Supervisors: Professor Riana Bornman (University of Pretoria), Professor Vanessa Hayes, Dr Weerachai Jaratlerdsiri (University of Sydney)
Visiting PhD Student
Jenna Craddock
Jenna is a PhD student at the University of Pretoria, South Africa and Hayes Lab affiliate student.
Title: Epigenomic drivers of aggressive prostate cancer in men of African ancestry.
Supervisors: Dr Sean Patrick, Professor Riana Bornman (University of Pretoria), Professor Vanessa Hayes (University Sydney), Dr Pavlo Lutsik (KU Leuven Belgium)
Visiting PhD Student
Eva Ferlev Jensby
Eva is a PhD student at Aarhus University, Denmark in the lab of Professor Karina Dalsgaard Sørensen. Here Eva is Unraveling the molecular heterogeneity of low-risk prostate cancer and its tumour microenvironment. Eva as part of her Danish Scholarship will spend 6 months in the Hayes Lab, contributing to our funded USA Prostate Cancer Foundation study focused on genome-profiling low-risk disease in African men.
Visiting MSc Student
Umuna Maendo
Umuna is a MSc student (since 2023) registered at the Botswana International University for Science and Technology (BUIST), Botswana. A Hayes Lab affiliate, Umuna has been awarded the first HEROIC2 African Scholarship to spend 6 months in our lab.
Title: Genes of fatty acid metabolism and prostate cancer health disparities
Supervisors: Professor Nerve Zhou, Professor Kebaneilwe Lebani (BUIST), Professor Vanessa Hayes, Dr Weerachai Jaratlerdsiri, Dr Pamela Soh (University of Sydney)
Current Honours Students
Aria Pestonji
Project: Cloud Genomics: Digital transformation of patient whole genome sequence analysis.
Supervisors: Dr Weerachai Jaratlerdsiri, Professor Vanessa Hayes
Harry Critchton-Clark
Project: Interrogating the prostate tumour structome – making clinical sense of large-scale tumour genome complexity.
Supervisors: Professor Vanessa Hayes, Dr Mehedi Hasan, Dr Weerachai Jaratlerdsiri
Pamela Masendeke
Project: The role of the mitogenome in aggressive prostate cancer and ethnic disparities.
Supervisors: Professor Vanessa Hayes, Dr Pamela Soh
Past Students
PhD graduates and graduate affiliates
Dr Mpho Mokoatie, University of Pretoria, South Africa (2024)
Dr Tingting Gong, University of Sydney (2021)
Dr Megan Crumbaker, University of NSW Sydney (2020)
Dr Anton Kalsbeek, University of NSW Sydney (2017)
Dr Rae-Anne Hardie, University of NSW Sydney (2014)
Dr Elizabeth Tindall, University of NSW Sydney (2010), Cancer Institute NSW Premier’s Awardee
Dr Desiree Petersen, University of Stellenbosch South Africa (2007)
MSc graduates and graduate affiliates
Kirsten Channer, University of Pretoria, South Africa (2021)
Jenna Craddock, University of Pretoria, South Africa (2021)
Pieter Bouwman, University of Pretoria, South Africa (2018)
Tingting Gong, University of Sydney (2017)
Roshan Hendricks, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa (2005)
Desiree Petersen, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa (2003), University Medal
BSc Honours graduates and graduate affiliates
Kangping Zhou, University of Sydney (2024)
Sharaf Fozdar, University of Sydney (2023)
Ruotian Huang, University of Sydney (2023)
Stina Nicholaysen, University of NSW Sydney (2009)
Mariska Botha, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa (2001)
Tammy Cashmore, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa (2000)
Undergraduate Interns (National and International)
Zian Hao, University of Sydney Dalyell Student (May-June 2024)
Alice Adams, University of Bath, UK (September 2022-August 2023)
He-Shyan Balnave, University of Sydney Dalyell Student (May-June 2023)
Garielle Younes, University of NSW Sydney Summer Intern (December 2021- January 2022)
Aleksa Krsmanovic, University of Belgrade, Serbia (6 months 2020)
Katherine Harmeyer, University of California Los Angeles, USA (3 months 2014)
Zolani Simayi, University of Limpopo, South Africa (3 months 2011)
Wee Siang Teo, University of NSW Sydney (8 weeks 2008)
Katharina Schipany, Danube University Krems, Austria (6 months 2007)
Jawad Saab, University of Sydney (3 months 2007)
Georg Dossinger, University Düsseldorf, Germany (6 months 2006)