How Interdisciplinary Backgrounds Drive Innovation in Chronic Pain Research

Interview with :

Guest :

Megan Tsao is a second-year MSc student in Human Genetics at McGill University, supervised by Dr. Audrey Grant. With a BSc in Human Biology and Sociology from the University of Toronto, Megan brings an interdisciplinary approach to her research, drawing from experiences in basic science, clinical labs, and the pharmaceutical industry. Her work focuses on integrating genomics, proteomics, and multi-omics data to address complex health questions, with a particular interest in exploring genetic contributors to chronic pain. Megan is passionate about leveraging biobank and health record data to uncover insights into disease, promote health equity, and drive innovation in precision medicine.

Host:

Chen-Yang Su is a 3 rd year PhD student in Quantitative Life Sciences (https://www.mcgill.ca/qls/) at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and part of the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Genomic Medicine (https://www.genomic- medicine-cerc.online/) under the supervision of Dr. Satoshi Yoshiji (https://yoshiji- lab.org/) and Prof. Sirui Zhou (https://szhoulab.github.io/). Previously, he completed his M.Sc. (Computer Science, 2022) and B.Sc. (joint majoring in Biology and Computer Science, 2020) both at McGill University while being affiliated with the Lady Davis Institute (https://www.ladydavis.ca/en/) at the Jewish General Hospital and Mila – Quebec AI Institute (https://mila.quebec/en). During his MSc, he had the opportunity to work with proteomics and genomics in the context of COVID-19 under the supervision of Dr. Brent Richards (Faculty of Medicine; CEO of 5 Prime Sciences; https://www.mcgill.ca/genepi/) and Joelle Pineau (Faculty of Computer Science; Vice President, AI research at Meta); https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~jpineau/). He has worked in industry briefly as a data scientist and his current broader interests are in using multi- omics approaches (proteomics, genomics, metabolomics) for precision medicine and drug target discovery.

Summary of the episode :

In this episode of Let's talk about Pain, we meet Megan Tsao, a master's student at Alan Edwards Centre for Research on Pain at McGill University under the supervision of Dr. Audrey Grant. We explore her background and experiences in research and what led her to take an interest in pain research, specifically the pain genomics.

Twitter links : @megantsao0914 @chenyangsu @mcgillu @rqrd_qprn