Leopold Parts
Program
Junior Fellow Academy
Appointment
Junior Fellow, Genetic Networks
Institution
University of Toronto
Country
Canada 
Leopold Parts is a CIFAR Junior Fellow working under the supervision of Genetic Networks Fellow Charlie Boone and Program Director Brenda Andrews in the University of Toronto’s Banting and Best Department of Medical Research and Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research. Leo completed his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and University of Cambridge in 2011 with Dr. Richard Durbin, his thesis winning the Grand Prize for Ph.D. work in his native Estonia.
He began undergraduate studies at the University of Tartu, Estonia, before obtaining his B.Sc. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a double major in Computer Science & Engineering and Mathematics. In 2011, he had the honour of attending the 61st Meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau, Germany as an invited young researcher.
Leo’s research is in the field of genetics. We know that most traits, from weight and temperament to disease risk, are heritable, and many places in a person’s genome influence them. However, we do not know or have good ways to find out what the intermediate steps in this process are. Leo is working to shed light on this issue by mapping features of cells that are both heritable and required for a particular trait in baker’s yeast, the simplest single cell organism. This will help understand the general problem of how naturally occurring genetic variation with small effect sizes can affect the characteristics of an individual.
He began undergraduate studies at the University of Tartu, Estonia, before obtaining his B.Sc. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a double major in Computer Science & Engineering and Mathematics. In 2011, he had the honour of attending the 61st Meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau, Germany as an invited young researcher.
Leo’s research is in the field of genetics. We know that most traits, from weight and temperament to disease risk, are heritable, and many places in a person’s genome influence them. However, we do not know or have good ways to find out what the intermediate steps in this process are. Leo is working to shed light on this issue by mapping features of cells that are both heritable and required for a particular trait in baker’s yeast, the simplest single cell organism. This will help understand the general problem of how naturally occurring genetic variation with small effect sizes can affect the characteristics of an individual.