Dr. Joanna Yu is the senior portfolio manager for the BrainHealth Databank in the Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). She is passionate about driving system change to promote collaborative and interdisciplinary research to accelerate discovery and improve mental health outcomes.
After completing her PhD in molecular genetics at the University of Toronto, investigating the molecular mechanisms of mental health, Dr. Yu joined the research and informatics team at the Ontario Brain Institute. There, she managed multidisciplinary clinical research programs and the implementation of the Brain-CODE neuroinformatics platform. She went on to manage research at the Centre for Depression and Suicide Studies at St. Michael’s Hospital, where she led the Canadian Biomarker Integrated Network for Depression (CAN-BIND) neuroinformatics team.
Areas of Work
Dr. Yu’s current work at the Krembil Centre focuses on the CAMH BrainHealth Databank - an open “databank” of accumulated patient data and biosamples to inform new research and improve care. As a collaborative scientist, she is working in partnership with groups across CAMH – clinicians, scientists, patients and families, information management, privacy, legal and ethics - to design and implement core infrastructure that enables digital measurement-based care, the integration of research measures with care pathways, artificial intelligence, and personalized care, and open science for discovery and innovation.
She is a speaker at conferences and science events, particularly encouraging young women in STEAM, and she currently sits on the Science Rendezvous Board of Directors.