U of T computer scientist gets $100,000 (USD) grant from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Research considered to have transformational potential
Ryan Lilien of U of T's Department of Computer Science is one of only six Canadians to receive a prestigious grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Grand Challenges Exploration Initiative to support his team's innovative research in computational modelling of drug resistance.
Drug resistance is a major global health issues because antibiotics and anti-viral therapies have been the cornerstone of infectious disease treatment, control programs and elimination campaigns for many diseases. However, the effectiveness of existing treatments for diseases such as malaria, TB and HIV/AIDS is increasingly compromised by the evolution of drug-resistant pathogens.
New ways need to be found to create drugs that are less likely to be made ineffective by pathogen evolution, which would enhance the useful lifespan of anti-microbial agents and generally improve treatment. Lilien's work combines computer science with biological science in developing models of mutations of pathogens with the overall aim of reducing drug resistance.
"This is a great honour for our group and for U of T, said Lilien. "Receiving a Gates Foundation Grant will allow us to significantly advance our resistance modeling work, both computationally and in the wet-lab."
"The scale of research and the breadth of research expertise, together with the quality of the graduate student body available at U of T make it ideal for this interdisciplinary work," added Lilien. Such interdisciplanarity is evident in the fact that Lilien has a PhD in computer science as well as a medical degree. He has appointments in U of T's Department of Computer Science, Computational Biology, the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research and the Banting and Best Department of Medical Research. His research team members include graduate students in computational biology Abraham Heifets, Navdeep Jaitly, Maria Mirza and Izhar Wallach.
Successful applicants to the Grand Challenges Exploration Initiative showed how their project falls outside current scientific paradigms and could lead to significant advances if successful.
"We were hoping this program would level the playing field so anyone with a transformational idea could more quickly assess its potential for the benefit of global health," said Dr. Tachi Yamada, president of global health at the Gates Foundation, who announced the grants at the fourth annual meeting of the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative in Bangkok. "The quality of the applications exceeded all of our expectations." There were nearly 4,000 proposals and 104 grants were selected.