Dr. Lakshmi Muthuswamy appointed Principal Investigator in OICR's Informatics and Biocomputing Platform
Dr. Lakshmi Muthuswamy
Dr. Lakshmi Muthuswamy, a physicist with experience in Canada, the United States and India, has been appointed Principal Investigator with the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) Informatics and Biocomputing Platform, effective November 2008.
A native of India, Muthuswamy completed a B.Sc. in physics at the University of Madras and an M.Sc. in physics at the University of Barthidasan before moving to Canada to complete a PhD in Engineering Physics at McMaster University in Hamilton. She started her career in telecommunications industry, leading a team of scientists to develop a semiconductor laser device for Nortel Networks.
In 2003, she moved to New York to work with Mike Wigler as a Senior Computer Scientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island. At Cold Spring Harbor, Muthuswamy developed a statistical method based on Hidden Markov Model to interpret copy number polymorphisms in the normal human population. This led to the seminal discovery that copy number variation (CNV) is common in the human genome, resulting in a 2004 paper in the prestigious journal Science.
Since then, Muthuswamy has been interested in investigating the role of CNVs in human diseases and understanding their genetic basis. At Cold Spring Harbor, her work involved Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), autoimmune diseases, rheumatoid arthritis and breast cancer.
After a visit to Toronto in 2007, Muthuswamy decided to relocate to Ontario to work with the large bioinformatics group being built at OICR. Muthuswamy will lead a research group with a focus on cancer and genetic diseases. The goal of the cancer study will be to identify regions of genomes that are frequently mutated and to determine if the genomic profiles can indeed predict the outcome. Her team will focus on two broad themes: developing technologies to identify genetic variants and developing statistical algorithms to make sense of the data.
Muthuswamy’s work will have important implications not just for cancer, but also for autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and neurological diseases like autism. In addition to her work in cancer genomics, she will also maintain independent research projects and collaborations, mostly through external grant support.
