Accelerating Clinical TranslationThrough Multi-Omics& Computational Biology

Dr. Scott Tebbutt is Chief Executive Officer and Chief Scientific Officer of the PROOF Centre of Excellence. He provides overall scientific leadership and operational vision for the Centre, directing translational programs in multi-omic biomarker discovery, development, and implementation across heart failure, organ transplantation, respiratory diseases, and infectious disease.

Dr. Tebbutt is also Professor in the Department of Medicine (Division of Respiratory Medicine) at the University of British Columbia, and Principal Investigator and Director of Education at the Centre for Heart Lung Innovation (HLI) at St. Paul’s Hospital. He has served on numerous international advisory bodies, including the NIH Human Immunology Project Consortium (HIPC) and the CEPI Systems Immunology Task Force. He holds a B.A. in biochemistry from the University of Oxford and a Ph.D. in molecular genetics from the University of East Anglia.

Casey Shannon is Director of Data Science at the PROOF Centre of Excellence. Working at the interface of computer science, statistics, and biology, he develops computational pipelines and statistical learning methods to interpret high-dimensional multi-omic data from clinical cohorts. He was the computational lead on HEARTBiT, a blood-based gene expression test designed to detect acute cellular rejection in heart transplant recipients.

Interested in open and reproducible science, he co-developed the DIABLO multi-omics integration framework in mixOmics and open-source tools for in silico cell-type deconvolution. His collaborative research spans international partnerships, including the Expanded Program on Immunization Consortium (EPIC) examining infant immune development and vaccine response, the IMPACC study investigating COVID-19 trajectories, and ongoing biomarker studies in heart and lung disease. Casey completed Bachelor’s degrees in Cell Physiology & Genetics as well as Computer Science at the University of British Columbia.

Sara Assadian is Director of Clinical Research at the PROOF Centre of Excellence. She oversees clinical operations, study governance, regulatory compliance, and protocol execution across all PROOF biomarker discovery and validation programs. Working closely with Canadian and international trial sites, she manages patient recruitment protocols, ethics approvals, and clinical biospecimen repositories from study inception through clinical translation.

Prior to joining the PROOF Centre, Sara coordinated multi-centre clinical trials examining novel immunosuppressive medications in solid organ transplantation at BC Transplant. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of British Columbia and a Master’s in Health Studies from Athabasca University.

Dr. Chengliang Yang, MD, MSc, is a Transplant Scientist and Ex Vivo Lung Perfusion (EVLP) Specialist at the PROOF Centre and the Centre for Heart Lung Innovation (HLI), UBC. Working at the intersection of organ transplantation, immunology, and multi-omics, he develops and validates non-invasive blood biomarkers to improve diagnosis and risk assessment in heart and lung transplantation, as well as Long COVID.

He completed his postdoctoral fellowship and EVLP specialist training at the Latner Thoracic Surgery Research Laboratories and Toronto Lung Transplant Program (UHN/University of Toronto). Dr. Yang is also an active Senior Collaborator in the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) network.

Dr. Abhinav K. Checkervarty is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the PROOF Centre of Excellence. He builds computational pipelines and statistical models that integrate high-dimensional clinical cohort data—including raw sequencing, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, cytokines, and epigenetics—into candidate biomarkers.

His translational research spans diverse clinical indications, including vaccine response dynamics, infectious diseases, sickle cell trait, and solid organ transplant rejection. He earned his PhD in Experimental Medicine from the University of British Columbia and holds an MSc in Systems Biology and Bioinformatics.

Estefanía Espín Armas is a PhD Candidate in Experimental Medicine at the University of British Columbia under Dr. Scott Tebbutt at the Centre for Heart Lung Innovation. Her doctoral research addresses the clinical and molecular heterogeneity of Long COVID, combining qualitative insights from patients and healthcare professionals with transcriptomic and metabolomic biomarker discovery.

Bringing over a decade of biomedical research experience, she previously served for five years as a university lecturer in Medical Genetics and Cellular Biology in Ecuador. She holds a Master’s in Biomedical Biotechnology with distinction from the Polytechnic University of Valencia.