PathDay 2026.

Marcin Imieliński MD, PhD (Associate Professor of Pathology @ NYU Grossman School of Medicine, Director of Cancer Genomics Research @ NYU Perlmutter Cancer Center, Attending Pathologist @ NYU Langone Health, Core Member @ New York Genome Center) is a physician-scientist whose research is focused on understanding patterns of complex, noncoding, and structural genomic variation in human cancer.

Dr. Imieliński obtained his M.D. and Ph.D. in genomics and computational biology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and a B.S. in Computer Science from Rutgers College. He completed his residency and fellowship in molecular genetic pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School followed by postdoctoral research at the Broad Institute and Dana Farber Cancer Institute.

Over the past ten years, the Imieliński laboratory has pioneered the use of novel "genome graph" methods (JaBBA, gGnome, Cell 2020, Nature 2023, Nature Genetics 2023) and long read assays (Pore-C, Nature Biotechnology 2022) to study complex genomic rearrangements in cancer. His laboratory has also identified distinct patterns of noncoding somatic mutations that link human cancers to their cells of origin (Cell 2017, Nature Genetics 2025). Most recently, he is working to expand the clinical utility of whole genome sequencing in oncology.

Eric McGinnis is a hematopathologist at Vancouver General Hospital and a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia. He completed training in hematological pathology at UBC, followed by fellowship training in cancer cytogenomics and molecular pathology at Vancouver General Hospital and BC Cancer.

His work focuses on bringing genomic technologies—like next-generation sequencing and optical genome mapping—into everyday hematopathology practice and exploring the potential for emerging genomic technologies to improve the practice of laboratory hematology. He is also actively involved in teaching and clinical assay development in laboratory cancer genetics and an advocate for enhancing clinical trainee education in molecular diagnostics.

When he's not in the lab, you can usually find him at a local metal show or at home with his dogs and young child (who also loves blood).

Dr. Natalie Prystajecky is the Program Head of the Environmental Microbiology and Molecular and Microbial Genomics laboratories at the BCCDC Public Health Laboratory (PHL). She is also a Clinical Associate Professor in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of British Columbia. In her clinical and research roles, Dr. Prystajecky uses pathogen genomics and other emerging technologies to strengthen public health surveillance, outbreak investigation, and laboratory response across a wide range of infectious diseases.

In recent years, she has played a pivotal role in developing sequencing capacity at the BCCDC, advancing genomic approaches for routine surveillance and outbreak response, launching BC's wastewater surveillance program, and supporting collaborative genomic research on emerging pathogens such as H5N1. She is also co-leading the development of a genomics core to expand access to sequencing technologies, analytical capacity, and applied genomics expertise. Her work focuses on translating genomic innovation into practical public health applications, including new approaches to characterize antimicrobial resistance in wastewater and genomics-based methods to address emerging threats.