Ontario Genomics and CANSSI Ontario are pleased to announce Dr. Roux-Cil Ferreira as the recipient of one of three Ontario Genomics-CANSSI Ontario Postdoctoral Fellowships in Genome Data Science.
Roux-Cil Ferreira is a Postdoctoral Associate in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Western University, where she works under the supervision of Drs. Art Poon and Jessica Prodger. Roux-Cil’s research interest is in the statistical analysis of viral genomic data. Her research and writing has mainly focused on the analysis of HIV-1 data. She is currently working on analyzing the latent HIV-1 viral reservoir that represents a key barrier to a HIV cure. During her time at Western University she has written and published two peer-reviewed articles. Firstly a perspective article that is a reassessment of the field of HIV latent viral reservoir research from the point of view of statistical modelling and phylogenetics. Secondly, a resource paper detailing the development of the Poon lab’s web-based framework that rapidly analyses and visualizes the global diversity of SARS-CoV-2 genomes.
Prior to joining Western University, she was a Consultant at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. While there she helped validate models that improved estimates of time since HIV-1 infection, which are important in the context of vaccine development. She also assisted as co-author when this research was published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Roux-Cil received her PhD in Bioinformatics from the University of the Western Cape (Cape Town, South Africa). Her thesis and related published articles focused on quantifying the variations between the 3-dimensional structures of distinct HIV-1 surface proteins. Before her Ph.D., she completed her master’s degree in Mathematical Statistics at Stellenbosch University (Stellenbosch, South Africa) and a Bachelors as well as an Honors degree in Actuarial Science at the University of the Free State (Bloemfontein, South Africa).
Dr. Ferreira received the Fellowship in Genome Data Science for project: Quantifying the clonality and dynamics of the within-host HIV-1 latent reservoir.