Joo Ji-Hoon E

I completed my PhD in July 2012 and currently conducting my first post-doctoral placement at The Genetic Epidemiology Laboratory, Department of Pathology, the University of Melbourne, under supervision of Prof. Melissa Southey. I am involved in the large Epigenome-Wide-Association-Study of multiple cancers including breast and prostate. My main research focus is to study DNA methylation in breast cancer development and risk. I have a strong background in epigenetics especially in DNA methylation. I have gained extensive experience in this field throughout my PhD and Honour candidatures, which focussed on epigenetic discordances within twins. During the candidature, I used a variety of DNA methylation and other molecular biology techniques to examine epigenetic discordances within identical twins and to tease out environmental and underlying genetic influences in establishing the epigenetic marks, at both loci-specific and genome-wide scales. As I gained more in-depth knowledge on the topic, I developed a strong interest in cancer epigenetics predominantly due to its high clinical relevance. My growing interest led to discussions about my post-doc prospects with Professor Southey, a renowned breast cancer researcher. I started my first post-doc placement in her laboratory (Genetic Epidemiology Laboratory, GEL) as soon as completing my PhD in July, 2012. I have been closely involved in the Epigenome-Wide-Association-Studies of breast and other cancers. My contributions to the study include designing, optimising and implementing molecular assays in the laboratory, bioinformatics analyses, interpretation of the data, presentations and manuscript preparation. During this time, I have also developed strong collaborations with clinicians, epidemiologists and bioinformaticians from the Cancer Council Victoria (CCV), the Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative (VLSCI) and Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. I have demonstrated leadership by chairing the methylation working group of approximately 20 multidisciplinary members. Furthermore, I have access to biospecimens from several study cohorts (e.g. Melbourne Collaborative Cohort Study, Australian Breast Cancer Family Study, kConFab) and the state-of-art genomic facilities in the lab. I have also been awarded an early career grant for 2013 ($40,000) by the University of Melbourne. I am a CI on 5 NHMRC project grant applications for current round. I also have fluent bioinformatics skills and highly familiar with processing genome-wide DNA methylation and gene expression datasets and performing statistical analyses using R programming language. I have personally designed and performed numerous bisulfite PCR assays for various downstream applications including bisulfite sequencing and Sequenom EpiTYPER.