Emilia Lim

Emilia obtained her BSc in Bioinformatics at the University of Alberta, where she completed her thesis on the Human Metabolome Project with Dr. David Wishart. She then pursued her PhD in Bioinformatics under the mentorship of Dr. Marco Marra at UBC and the BC Cancer Genome Sciences Centre. She worked on epigenomic and transcriptomic biomarker discovery for treatment refractory hematological and pediatric cancers through the TCGA and TARGET NCI initiatives. She then completed her postdoctoral training with Dr. Charles Swanton at the Francis Crick Research Institute and University College London (UCL). She worked on the TRACERx and PEACE studies, examining chromosomal instability and how it shapes lung cancer evolution. Her interest in lung cancer in never smokers directed her to develop a framework for studying the environmental impact on cancer initiation. She discovered that air pollution triggers lung cancer initiation by promoting clonal expansion of cells harbouring oncogenic mutations which have accumulated due to aging. Her current research program concerns how environmental pollutants disrupt normal cells to accelerate the initiation of age-related disease states such as cancer.