Department of Medical Biophysics
Dr. Boutros pursued his undergraduate education at the University of Waterloo and his PhD at the University of Toronto. In 2008, Paul started his independent research career with an appointment at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research. He is now a Principal Investigator in Informatics & Biocomputing at OICR, and an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Pharmacology & Toxicology and Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on personalizing therapy for prostate cancer by developing novel statistical methodologies. He leads the bioinformatics analysis of the sequencing of 500 prostate cancers as part of the Canadian Prostate Cancer Genome Network, and is using these data to develop prostate cancer biomarkers. He also leads the ICGC-TCGA DREAM Somatic Mutation Calling Challenge to set global standards for analyzing cancer genomic data.
Reflection
The mentoring of graduate students is a sacred trust. At the dawn of their careers, our students privilege us to guide them on a journey of self-discovery: of what it is like to do transformational research, of what kind of career they want to build, and of what type of person they want to be. Nothing brings me greater happiness as a scientist, than seeing them succeed. It brings me great joy to know that the vigor and insight of my students will keep the light of research shining light at high-noon as my own career moves towards its dusk.