Gerd Bizi

Gerd Bizi

(he/him)

ML for Healthcare

Hi there!

I’m a Master’s student in the Department of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto where I am supervised by Dr. Chris McIntosh. My research will focus on developing multimodal methods to enhance clinical decision-making.

I completed my undergraduate degree at U of T, where I studied Computer Science (with a Focus in AI) and Biochemistry. I’ve taken advanced coursework in deep learning, computer vision, statistical learning, structural biology, bioinformatics, computational biology, and more.

A large research interest of mine during my undergraduate degree was the cryo-em problem. My senior thesis aimed to develop methodology to reconstruct membrane proteins embedded in their native lipid bilayer by using prior knowledge about their relative orientation. I was co-supervised by Dr. John L. Rubinstein at SickKids and Dr. David J. Fleet at the Vector Institute.

Previously, I was a Research Assistant at Sunnybrook Research Institute, where I developed models to predict bladder cancer recurrence from whole-slide images under Dr. Anne Marteland the Biomarker Imaging Research Laboratory.

Finally, I was trained as a wet-lab scientist with experience in confocal fluorescence microscopy, tissue culture, and protein purification under at SickKids, where I completed a summer project and junior thesis on mitochondrial and peroxisomal protein translocation and mitochondrial fission.

I also have a background as a wet-lab scientist in Dr. Peter K. Kim’s lab at SickKids, with experience in confocal fluorescence microscopy, tissue culture, and protein purification. I completed a summer project on mitochondrial and peroxisomal protein translocation and my junior thesis mitochondrial fission dynamics.

Figure 1: Resection of bladder cancer, with patches coloured according to risk of recurrence.
Reconstruction of (synthetic) V-ATPase found in a synaptic vesicle using the algorithm I developed.
Figure 2: Reconstruction of (synthetic) V-ATPase found in a synaptic vesicle using the algorithm I developed.
HeLa cell stained for Phalloidin (red) and BORG3 (green)
Figure 3: HeLa cell stained for Phalloidin (red) and BORG3 (green) imaged using confocal fluorescence microscopy.

My hobbies include reading, playing basketball, running, trying coffee shops around Toronto, and playing the official format of the Pokémon videogame, VGC.