Pitch Competition - Emerging Innovator

This competition is designed to spotlight groundbreaking research from graduate students tackling real-world challenges through genomics. This award recognizes bold, transformative ideas with the potential to drive impact in health, food, sustainability, and beyond.

This year’s winner: Bianca Kirsh – PhD Candidate, University of Toronto

Bianca’s winning idea: A machine learning tool that finds every last trace of circulating tumour DNA, allowing us to reconstruct the entire cancer genome from a blood sample alone. For the first time, we can understand what a cancer looks like, how it behaves, and how we can best treat it, without ever needing a tissue sample.