Olena Vaske is the Founder of the Treehouse Childhood Cancer Initiative at the University of Santa Cruz Genomics Institute, where she is Assistant Professor of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology. Dr. Vaske is the scientific lead for the California Kids Cancer Comparison (CKCC) project, one of the demonstration projects of the California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine, a public-private effort recently launched by Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr. Dr. Vaske’s research focuses on developing novel RNA-Seq analysis approaches to discover druggable targets for pediatric cancer patients. Dr. Vaske holds a PhD in Bioinformatics from the University of British Columbia and a BSc (Hons) in Molecular Genetics and Biology from the University of Toronto.