Colin Douglas.

colindougl.as/cv
me@colindougl.as
linkedin.com/in/colinddouglas

My name is Colin. I have a biochemistry-ish Ph.D. and I really like the R programming language. I’ve made a career of poking around in big data sets and telling stories that decision-makers find interesting.

EXPERIENCE

Canadian Digital Service

Halifax, NS (remote)
Senior Data Scientist, October 2025 - Present
Senior Data Advisor, October 2024 - October 2025

I currently work at the Canadian Digital Service, a small in-house team within the Government of Canada that helps other federal departments build simpler, more usable digital services for the public. We focus on the kinds of problems that show up again and again across government, rather than one-off projects.

I started out on the Business Enablement team. I helped the organization understand and talk about who it works with, and pitched in on organizing CDS’s internal data. I also helped run a data community of practice for the organization.

These days I work on CanadaLogin, the service replacing the Government of Canada’s legacy sign-in system. I help build and maintain the data pipelines that feed our analytics. I turn that data into fully automated Quarto-based reports and dashboards for partners and leadership, and forecast adoption, usage, and cost. I also support the legacy sign-in service CanadaLogin is replacing, helping that team with its own analytics and forecasting as the transition continues. A good chunk of the job, across both, is organizing our data and telling stories about it to the people making decisions.

Public Services and Procurement Canada

Ottawa, ON (remote)
Senior Data Scientist, February 2022 - October 2024
Data Scientist, November 2020 - February 2022

I was the primary data scientist for various incarnations of what was once called the Pay Administration Branch. I used the R programming language to help people understand whether the policies they were implementing were working.

I spent the first half of my tenure at Pay doing short- and medium-term time series modelling, on the scale of weeks to months. These forecasts fed into reporting upwards to the DM level and outwards to operational units. I provided guidance on things like resource determiniation, productivity metrics, and measuring the labour involved in individual pieces of work.

The second half of my time working at Pay, I used agent-based modelling to simulate the pay system and help forecast the long-term impact of certain policy and budget decisions. Although this was a modelling-heavy project, I also spent a lot of my time explaining my work to smart-but-not-technical people. My contributions were an important part of the Pay Program’s budget requests and consistently resulted in favourable funding decisions.

I also spent a lot of time advocating for the adoption of open source software (especially the R ecosystem) for making analyses reproducible. I have a lot of strong opinions on it and would love to talk to you about it! I have presented on the subject many times to many different government audiences, and you can see an example presentation here: Using R for Reproducible Reporting.

Precision Biologic Inc.

Dartmouth, NS
Research and Development Scientist
June 2017 - November 2020

I helped develop and clear two medical devices:

• CryoCheck Factor VIII Inhibitor Kit, which detects inhibitory factor VIII antibodies (K183440)
• CryoCheck Hex LA, which detects lupus anticoagulant through the neutralization of hexagonal phase phospholipid (K193556)

Faculty of Medicine, Dalhousie University

Halifax, NS
Killam Postdoctoral Research Fellow
April 2015 - May 2017

I studied mechanism-based inhibitors of enolase enzymes. In one project, I used multivariate non- linear curve fitting to suss out the different steps in an inhibition mechanism, and demonstrated that one molecule we worked with was the tightest known inhibitor of it’s target enzyme.

EDUCATION

University of Toronto, Toronto, ON
Ph.D., Biological and Organic Chemistry
Supervisor: Dr. Deborah Zamble
Thesis: Metal Specificity in [NiFe] Hydrogenase Maturation Proteins

St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, NS
B.Sc., Chemistry
Supervisor: Dr. Truis Smith-Palmer
Thesis: “Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy of Microbiological Systems”

POSTERS, PRESENTATIONS, AND PAPERS

• L.C. McGary, C.M. Fetter, M. Gu, M.C. Hamilton, H. Kumar, O.P. Kuehm, C.D. Douglas, S.L. Bearne. (2024). Interrogating l-fuconate dehydratase with tartronate and 3-hydroxypyruvate reveals subtle differences within the mandelate racemase-subgroup of the enolase superfamily Arch. Biochem. Biophys. 754, 109924. [ft]
• C.D. Douglas, L. Grandinetti, N.M. Easton, O.P. Kuehm, J.A. Hyaden, M.C. Hamilton, M. St. Maurice, S.L. Bearne. (2021). Slow-Onset, Potent Inhibition of Mandelate Racemase by 2-Formylphenylboronic Acid. An Unexpected Adduct Clasps the Catalytic Machinery. Biochemistry 60, 2508-18. [ft]
• C.D. Douglas, R. Clarke, N. Kesavan, D. Lamont, A. Sadeghi-Khomami, A. Wood, K.M. Black (Oct 2020). Comparison of Hexagonal Phase Phospholipid Neutralization Assays for Lupus Anticoagulant Detection. Poster presented at the THSNA 2020 Virtual Conference.
• C.D. Douglas, R. Clarke, N. Kesavan, D. Lamont, A. Sadeghi-Khomami, A. Wood, K.M. Black (July 2020). Laboratory Validation of a Novel Hexagonal Phase Phospholipid Neutralization Assay for Lupus Anticoagulant Detection. Poster presented at the ISTH Virtual Congress.
• C.D. Douglas, A. Wood, A. Sadeghi-Khomami, K.M. Black (September 2019). Effects of Common Interferents in Hexagonal Phase Phospholipid Neutralization Testing. Poster presented at the 16th International Congress on Antiphospholipid Antibodies, Manchester, UK.
• C.M. Fetter, Z.A. Morrison, M. Nagar, C.D. Douglas, S.L. Bearne (2019). Altering the Y137-K164-K166 triad of mandelate racemase and its effect on the observed pKa of the Brønsted base catalysts. Arch. Biochem. Biophys. 666, 116-126. [ft]
• C.D. Douglas, T. Quinton, E. Cabanban, K.M. Black, A. Sadeghi-Khomami (December 2018). A Standardized Kit for a Chromogenic Modified Nijmegen-Bethesda Assay. Poster presented at the 60th ASH Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA.
• C.D. Douglas, S.L. Bearne (June 2017). 2-Formylphenylboronate, a Potent Inhibitor of Mandelate Racemase. Oral presentation at the 100th Canadian Chemistry Conference and Exhibition, Toronto, ON.
• M.J. Lacasse, C.D. Douglas, D.B. Zamble (2016). Mechanism of Selective Nickel Transfer from Hydrogenase Accessory Proteins. Biochemistry 55, 6821–31. [ft]
• C.D. Douglas, D.B. Zamble (January 2014). The role of accessory proteins in the nickel insertion step of E. coli [NiFe] hydrogenase maturation. Oral presentation at the Gordon Conference on Metals in Biology, Ventura, CA.
• C.D. Douglas, T.T. Ngu, H. Kaluarachchi, D.B. Zamble (2013). Metal Transfer within the Escherichia coli HypB–HypA Complex of Hydrogenase Accessory Proteins. Biochemistry 52, 6030–6039. [ft]
• A.M. Sydor, M. Jost, K.S. Ryan, K.E. Turo, C.D. Douglas, C.L. Drennan, D.B. Zamble (2013). Metal binding properties of Escherichia coli YjiA, a member of the metal homeostasis-associated COG0523 family of GTPases. Biochemistry 52, 1788–1801. [ft]
• C.D. Douglas, A.D. Dias, D.B. Zamble (2012). The metal selectivity of a short peptide maquette imitating the high-affinity metal-binding site of E. coli HypB. Dalton Trans. 41, 7876–7878. [ft]
• C.D. Douglas, A.D. Dias, D.B. Zamble (June 2010). Probing the Selectivity of a High-Affinity Metal-Binding Peptide. Poster presentation at the 93rd Canadian Chemistry Conference and Exhibition, Toronto, ON.
• T. Smith-Palmer, C.D. Douglas, P. Fredericks (2010). Rationalizing the SER spectra of bacteria. Vib. Spectrosc. 53, 103–106. [ft]
• J.W.D. Comeau, J. Pink, E. Bezanson, C.D. Douglas, D. Pink, T. Smith-Palmer (2009). A comparison of Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilm development on ZnSe and TiO2 using attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Appl. Spectrosc. 63, 1000–1007. [ft]
• M. Kazanci, J.P. Schulte, C.D. Douglas, P. Fratzl, D. Pink, T. Smith-Palmer (2009). Tuning the surface-enhanced Raman scattering effect to different molecular groups by switching the silver colloid solution pH. Appl. Spectrosc. 63, 214–223. [ft]
• D.T. Walker, C.D. Douglas, B.J. MacLean (2009). Synthesis, characterization, and surface studies of conjugated polymers possessing 2,2’-biimidazole moieties. Can. J. Chem. 87, 729–737. [ft]
• C.D. Douglas, D. Pink, T. Smith-Palmer (2009, June). Surface-enhanced Raman Scattering of Microbiological Systems. Poster presentation at the 92nd Canadian Chemistry Conference and Exhibition, Hamilton, ON.

AWARDS AND RECOGNITION

OPEN SOURCE CONTRIBUTIONS

TECHNICAL STRENGTHS

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