Dr. Constance Li

Biography

Dr. Constance Li is a computational biologist with a focus on bioinformatics. She completed her Bachelor of Mathematics at the University of Waterloo and earned her PhD studying cancer genomics at the University of Toronto under the supervision of Dr. Paul Boutros. Following her doctoral studies, she pursued a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Cancer Centre Singapore, working with Dr. Gopal Iyer and Dr. Melvin Chua. Dr. Li's expertise lies in the computational analysis of biological data, with a particular interest in the molecular associations of cancer and health disparities. Her research targets the heterogeneous nature of cancer, examining the differential characteristics across various groups of people. For instance, she investigates how cancer varies profoundly by sex, addressing the differential cancer burden between male and female patients, as described by differences in incidence, prevalence, and mortality rates of numerous non-sex-specific cancers across multiple regions of the world. Her studies are motivated by epidemiological sex disparities in cancer, aiming to elucidate the corresponding differences in clinical characteristics, treatment responses, and the widespread molecular variations such as epigenetic changes and genomic mutations. Additionally, Dr. Li is interested in exploring genomic associations related to cancer disparities and the relationships between various factors in the tumor microenvironment, leveraging this understanding to improve biomarker design.

Research Interests