Brett Trost

Dr. Brett Trost completed his PhD in Computer Science at the University of Saskatchewan, where he developed computational and statistical methods for studying phosphorylation-mediated cellular signaling. Subsequently, he was a Research Fellow at The Centre for Applied Genomics at The Hospital for Sick  Children (SickKids), where he used whole-genome sequencing data to study the genomic architecture of autism and other neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions. Dr. Trost joined the Molecular Medicine Program at SickKids as a Scientist in December 2023.

Research

Dr. Trost's research program is dedicated to the creation and application of novel computational biology methods for detecting and interpreting genetic variation. His long-term aim is to leverage multi-omic data (e.g., transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and epigenetics) in combination with machine learning approaches to better understand disease-associated genetic variation.

Education and experience

• 2023–Present: Scientist, Molecular Medicine, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2021–2023: Research Associate, Genetics and Genome Biology, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2016–2021: Research Fellow, Genetics and Genome Biology, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada
• 2014–2016: Research Assistant, Computer Science, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada
• 2009–2014: PhD, Computer Science, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada
• 2007–2009: M.Sc., Computer Science, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada
• 2003–2007: B.Sc., Bioinformatics, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada

Achievements

• 2022: Richard Todd Award, International Society of Psychiatric Genetics
• 2019–2020: Research Scholar Award, Canadian Open Neuroscience Platform
• 2018: Invited Participant, 68th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting
• 2017–2019: Banting Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Canadian Institutes of Health Research
• 2017–2019: Lap-Chee Tsui Fellowship for Research Excellence, The Hospital for Sick Children
• 2015: Governor General’s Academic Gold Medal, Government of Canada
• 2009–2012: Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada

1. B. Trost, B. Thiruvahindrapuram, A.J.S. Chan, W. Engchuan, E.J. Higginbotham, J.L. Howe, L.O. Loureiro, M.S. Reuter, D. Roshandel, J. Whitney, M. Zarrei, M. Bookman, C. Somerville, R. Shaath, M. Abdi, E. Aliyev, R.V. Patel, T. Nalpathamkalam, G. Pellecchia, O. Hamdan, G. Kaur, Z. Wang, J.R. MacDonald, J. Wei, W.W.L. Sung, S. Lamoureux, N. Hoang, T. Selvanayagam, N. Deflaux, M. Geng, S. Ghaffari, J. Bates, E.J. Young, Q. Ding, C. Shum, L. D'Abate, C.A. Bradley, A. Rutherford, V. Aguda, B. Apresto, N. Chen, S. Desai, X. Du, M.L.Y. Fong, S. Pullenayegum, K. Samler, T. Wang, K. Ho, T. Paton, S.L. Pereira, J.-A. Herbrick, R.F. Wintle, J.Fuerth, J. Noppornpitak, H. Ward, P. Magee, A. Al Baz, U. Kajendirarajah, S. Kapadia, J. Vlasblom, M. Valluri, J. Green, V. Seifer, M. Quirbach, O. Rennie, E. Kelley, N. Masjedi, C. Lord, M.J. Szego, M.H. Zawati, M. Lang, L.J. Strug, C.R. Marshall, G. Costain, K. Calli, A. Iaboni, A. Yusuf, P. Ambrozewicz, L. Gallagher, D.G. Amaral, J. Brian, M. Elsabbagh, S. Georgiades, D.S. Messinger, S. Ozonoff, J. Sebat, C. Sjaarda, I.M. Smith, P. Szatmari, L. Zwaigenbaum, A. Kushki, T.W. Frazier, J.A.S. Vorstman, K.A. Fakhro, B.A. Fernandez, M.E.S. Lewis, R. Weksberg, M. Fiume, R.K.C. Yuen, E. Anagnostou, N. Sondheimer, D. Glazer, D.M. Hartley, and S.W. Scherer. Genomic architecture of autism from comprehensive whole-genome sequence annotation. Cell 185(23):4409-4427, 2022.
2. B. Trost, L.O. Loureiro, and S.W. Scherer. Discovery of genomic variation across a generation. Hum Mol Genet 30(R2):R174-R186, 2021.
3. B. Trost*, W. Engchuan*, C.M. Nguyen*, B. Thiruvahindrapuram*, E. Dolzhenko, I. Backstrom, M. Mirceta, B.A. Mojarad, Y. Yin, A. Dov, I. Chandrakumar, T. Prasolava, N. Shum, O. Hamdan, G. Pellecchia, J.L. Howe, J. Whitney, E.W. Klee, S. Baheti, D.G. Amaral, E. Anagnostou, M. Elsabbagh, B.A. Fernandez, N. Hoang, M.E.S. Lewis, X. Liu, C. Sjaarda, I.M. Smith, P. Szatmari, L. Zwaigenbaum, D. Glazer, D. Hartley, A.K. Stewart, M.A. Eberle, N. Sato, C.E. Pearson, S.W. Scherer, and R.K.C. Yuen. Genome-wide detection of tandem DNA repeats that are expanded in autism. Nature 586(7827):80-86, 2020.
4. B. Trost, S. Walker, S.A. Haider, W.W.L. Sung, S. Pereira, C.L. Phillips, E.J. Higginbotham, L.J. Strug, C. Nguyen, A. Raajkumar, M.J. Szego, C.R. Marshall, and S.W. Scherer. Impact of DNA source on genetic variant detection from human whole-genome sequencing data. J Med Genet 56(12):809-817, 2019.
5. B. Trost, S. Walker, Z. Wang, B. Thiruvahindrapuram, J.R. MacDonald, W.W.L. Sung, S.L. Pereira, J. Whitney, A.J.S. Chan, G. Pellecchia, M.S. Reuter, S. Lok, R.K.C. Yuen, C.R. Marshall, D. Merico, and S.W. Scherer. A comprehensive workflow for read depth-based identification of copy-number variation from whole-genome sequence data. Am J Hum Genet 102(1):142-155, 2018.

*Contributed equally

See a full list of Dr. Trost's publications on Google Scholar.