CANSSI Ontario STAGE Welcomes Postdoctoral Fellow Trainee Muhammad Shoaib

Muhammad Shoaib, recipient of CANSSI Ontario STAGE Trainee Program.

CANSSI Ontario STAGE is pleased to announce Muhammad Shoaib as one of three selected CANSSI Ontario STAGE Trainees.

Muhammad is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Hospital for Sick Children and the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto, where he works under the supervision of Jennifer Crosbie, Frank Wendt and Daniel Felsky.

Muhammad received his PhD in Molecular Genetics and Experimental Medicine at the Universita di Brescia in Italy where he researched molecular and computational genetics, specifically pharmacogenetics of antidepressants and the prediction of gene expression. He has also worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Medicine and Neuroscience at the University of Montreal.

Muhammad’s research interest is in child and adolescent psychiatric disorders using high dimensional genetic data and statistical methods. He has published research in the areas of genetic epidemiology, pharmacogenomics, and drug metabolism.

Muhammad received this year’s award for the project: Evaluation of polygenic risk-environment (GxE) interaction models for ADHD traits.

The goal of his project is to investigate the role of environmental factors in complex neurodevelopmental condition; attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; the interaction between individual polygenic risk and environment using large scale genetic and environmental data; and complex GxE interaction models. The project requires the implementation of statistical methods including calculation of polygenic risk scores, linear environmental mixed models, and Bayesian statistics.