The Academic Director, Director Operations & Strategy, and appointed faculty Associate Directors form the Executive Team and oversee day-to-day operations of the DSI.
Lisa Strug is a Professor in the Departments of Statistical Sciences, Computer Science and the Division of Biostatistics, and the Director of CANSSI Ontario, at the University of Toronto. She is also the Associate Director of The Centre for Applied Genomics and a Senior Scientist at The Hospital for Sick Children.
Professor Strug is a statistical geneticist and her research focuses on the development of novel statistical approaches to analyze and integrate multi-omics data to identify genetic contributors to complex human disease.
Gary Bader is Professor and Ontario Research Chair at the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research, with cross-appointments in the Departments of Computer Science and Molecular Genetics.
Professor Bader is an affiliate of the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute and Princess Margaret Cancer Centre.
Professor Eyal de Lara is Chair and Graduate Chair of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. His research focus is on experimental research on mobile and pervasive computing systems.
Ethan Fosse is an Associate Professor of Sociology, Faculty Affiliate with the Centre for Analytics and Artificial Intelligence Engineering, and Co-Director of the Consortium on Advanced Social Analytics at the University of Toronto. Before joining the University of Toronto, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Departments of Sociology and Politics at Princeton University, where he developed and led a series of open-source data science and programming workshops.
Professor Fosse's research focuses on developing and applying computational and quantitative methods to study social change, inequality, and social connectedness. His work includes designing new techniques for cohort analysis, applying these methods to topics such as verbal ability, political identification, and social mobility, as well as advancing data-driven AI methods to address central questions in the social sciences.
Meredith Franklin is an Associate Professor jointly appointed in the Department of Statistical Sciences and the School of the Environment. She is also the Master of Science in Applied Computing (MScAC) Data Science concentration lead.
Professor Franklin’s interdisciplinary research centers on using data science to better understand how the physical environment affects public health.
She has been a leader in developing spatiotemporal methods that leverage large ground- and space-based datasets to characterize human exposures to environmental factors including air pollution, wildfires, oil and gas flaring, noise, artificial light at night, and greenspace.
Dr. Helen Lasthiotakis is the Director, Operations and Strategy at the Data Sciences Institute, University of Toronto. At DSI, she is responsible for the development and management of strategic plans and partnerships, the development of thematic and collaborative research strategies, and oversight of the DSI’s fellowship, training and event programs, and strategic communications plans.
Dr. Lasthiotakis has held senior roles at U of T, including in the offices of the Vice-President Research & Strategic Initiatives, the Office of the Provost, the Dean's Office in the Faculty of Arts & Science, as well as the Nortel Institute in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. She holds her Masters in Science in Geology, and her PhD in Higher Education Leadership & Policy.
David Lie is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto. He also holds appointments in the Department of Computer Science, the Faculty of Law and is a research lead with the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, a Vector Faculty Affiliate and a Senior Massey College Fellow.
He is known for his seminal work on the XOM architecture, which was an early precursor to modern trusted execution processor architectures such as ARM Trustzone and Intel SGX. David’s research interests are broadly focused in the areas or privacy and cybersecurity.
Bree McEwan is a Professor in the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology, an associate director in the Data Sciences Institute, and a faculty affiliate of the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society.
McEwan authored Navigating New Media Networks and co-authored Interpersonal Encounters. She directs the McEwan Mediated Communication Lab which researches the intersection of technology and social interaction. In addition, McEwan has metascience interests focused on transparency and replication in the social sciences. Current studies of the McMC Lab focus on affordances of social virtual environments, cognition and heuristics related to learning in VR spaces, and nonverbal communication patterns of avatars and agents.
Laura Rosella is a Professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and in the Faculty of Medicine’s Department of Laboratory Medicine & Pathobiology. Professor Rosella’s expertise and research centers on advanced analytic methods for population health and health system applications.
Professor Rosella is an affiliate of the Vector Institute, the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society and Site Director for ICES U of T. She holds the Inaugural Stephen Family Research Chair in Community Health at the Institute for Better Health, Trillium Health Partners.
