About Me

Hello there, welcome to my page!

Me with goldenrod gall fly

^Me with some goldenrods and a gall housing the parasitic goldenrod gall fly, Eurosta solidaginis.

I’m Yiran, a PhD student from the Awadalla Lab, in Molecular Genetics, at the University of Toronto. Before this, I received my B.Sc. Honours at Western University in London, Ontario, where I did my undergraduate thesis projects in Dr. Simon Bonner’s and Dr. Art Poon’s labs.

I do computational biology. What (I believe) this means is that I write code, build models, and fit those models to biological data, trying to dig insights hidden in the biology. The data that I have worked with include developmental images of human kidney organoids that are exposed to heavy metal, observation records of non-native birds in North America, and pathology slides of ovarian cancer.

I find nature fascinating, and I think with a bit more help on data analysis and machine learning, we can reveal much more of its secrets much easier.

Outside of school, I read (probably too many) books, listen to musicals (mostly on Spotify because I usually can’t afford the tickets), and chill with my two Guinea pigs.

!!! DO NOT SCROLL DOWN IF YOU HAVE FEAR OF RODENTS !!!

Guinea pigs

^ My guinea pigs (Cavia porcellus) Sharpie (left, tan) and Laifu (right, tricolour), chilling, as if they’re not planning on taking over the world.

If you are interested in collaborating or seeing some more pics of Guinea pigs, reach me at: