Josiah Lansang first UCalgary computer scientist accepted into two different national health training programs

If you’ve ever tried to figure out how somebody’s brain works, you might have something in common with computer scientist Josiah Lansang. 

He’s recently been selected for two health research training platforms funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research: the 2S/LGBTQ+ Health Hub and the GROWW (Guiding interdisciplinary Research On Women’s and girls’ health and Wellbeing) program. 

Computer science master’s student Lansang, BSc’24, is the first trainee from the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Science to be accepted to either program, which each select national cohorts of about 20 trainees. 

“I hope more people from Science see themselves in programs like these,” he says. “There are so many people in Science whose work connects to health and to people’s lives.” 

“I’m so thrilled for Josiah, and that his passion and leadership are being recognized,” says Dr. Emma Towlson, PhD, Lansang’s graduate school supervisor and an associate professor with the Department of Computer Science.

“These programs are huge opportunities, and I know he will be an excellent ambassador for the Faculty of Science, for complexity science, and, most importantly, for the next generation of researchers that are driven by the big questions rather than traditional disciplines, and want to leave the world better than they found it.” 

Lansang uses computer science to study the connections in the brain. His current research examines how those connections change in transgender and gender-diverse adults taking gender-affirming hormone therapy. 

He builds models of the brain by combining MRI scans with data on hormone levels, stress and mental health measures using the university’s Advanced Research Computing Cluster. 

“The average brain has over 80 billion neurons,” says Lansang. “But we can’t understand the brain by looking at each neuron separately. You have to step back and ask what patterns emerge, and how they change.” 

He helped co-found the Queer Research Hub, where he built a website crawler to map queer research across campus and helped bring nearly 100 people together for the inaugural Queerposium.

Queer and trans communities are underrepresented in health research, and their experiences and priorities have not always shaped the questions researchers ask.  

“Every line in this data set represents a person who trusted us with part of their story, and that responsibility is especially important when you’re doing research with queer and trans communities,” says Lansang.

For Lansang, the goal is to better understand gender-affirming care, not to use brain scans to define who someone is or determine access to treatment. 

Helping build the Queer Research Hub has also shown him the value of community around research.  

“Research can feel very individual sometimes,” says Lansang. “The Hub has shown me how much you gain from bringing people across different fields together around questions they care about.” 

Both programs build on that interdisciplinary approach. The Health Hub lets Lansang go deeper into 2SLGBTQ+ health and community-informed research, while GROWW broadens that training across health, sex and gender.  

“People might be surprised that a computer scientist is training with them, but I’ve never seen a hard divide between my work and health research,” says Lansang. “My tool kit is based in computing, but the questions I ask are about people.” 

Lansang says he’s really excited for the year ahead: “I might be the first, but I’m not going to be the last.”