Hometown: North Vancouver, BC, Canada
Academic & professional history
Signe (she/her) obtained her BSc in Health Sciences from SFU in 2021 and during her undergraduate degree she contributed to research involving spiders and HIV in the Gries and Brumme labs. Signe joined the MATCH Lab as a graduate student in 2021.
What project(s) do you work on?
Viruses are recognized drivers of ~10% of cancers. Oncogenic viruses disrupt tumour genomes and epigenomes, thereby producing “signatures” of viral infection. Signe’s project surrounds characterizing these signatures in both virally-driven and non-virally associated cancers using a long-read whole genome sequencing approach. As part of this project, Signe has characterized a complex form of structural variation called extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA) across advanced cancers and in cervical cancer. She hopes this research will reveal the unique ways oncogenic viruses drive malignancy, so we may be better able to target virally-driven cancers in the future.
How do you spend your time outside of the lab?
Running, listening to music and podcasts, trivia and word games