Norma Ybarra, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the Gerald Bronfman Department of Oncology, McGill University, where she has been a faculty member since 2017. She teaches Radiobiology and Anatomy and Physiology for Medical Physicists at the Medical Physics Unit. Norma completed her PhD in the University of Montreal and her undergraduate studies at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico.

Radiotherapy (RT) is a very important treatment modality for several cancer and contributes to around 40% of the curative treatment, but unfortunately it also causes side effects. The overall goal of Norma’s research program is to improve RT efficacy by using compounds that target the metabolic preferences of cancer cells, while protecting normal cells from RT-induced side effects. She is also interested in the role of lifestyle in the pathogenesis of chronic diseases, such as cancer and cardiovascular disease, and how lifestyle choices impact the response to cancer therapies in adult cancer patients.

Norma collaborates with the Kildea lab on the NICE research projects that involve cell handling. In particular, she is a co-investigator on our Canadian Space Agency-funded project to use single-cell DNA sequencing to detect post-irradiation mutations.