Dr. Vergara is a mid-career Senior Computational Biologist with >10 years of postdoctoral experience in cancer research across industry and academia, specialising in Translational Oncology with a unique multidisciplinary background in Computer Science and Biotechnology Engineering, a MSc Computer Science and a PhD. in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry.

Dr. Vergara has 3 patent families awarded internationally on prognostic methods in genitourinary cancers and melanoma, two patents pending on diagnostic methods in melanoma and has published >60 publications with >5400 citations (H-index 30).

At GenomeDx Biosciences, (Vancouver, Canada) Dr. Vergara co-managed the intellectual property portfolio of the company and was part of the generation of Decipher® - a genomic test for prostate cancer progression incorporated in the NCCN guidelines. After transitioning to Australia, Dr. Vergara established as an expert in Melanoma Genomics at Peter Mac, leading the execution of the research that unveiled copy number alterations as the main molecular events acquired in lethal melanoma as well as their modulating effect on the neoantigenicity of late-stage disease (Vergara et al 2021, Nat Comms).

AT MIA, Dr. Vergara’s research focuses on the generation of diagnostic, prognostic and predictive clinical-molecular tools and on the identification of drivers of disease progression and immune evasion in treatment-naïve and anti-PD1-treated patients in melanoma and other skin cancers (Vergara et al 2023, Mod Path, awarded “The Best Papers of the USCAP Journals in 2023”). Recently, Dr. Vergara discovered and validated a genomic diagnostic test (Vergara et al 2025, CCR), MIADx, currently filed internationally for global protection and commercialisation. This test is currently being migrated with support of an international Thermofisher Oncomine Clinical research grant, of which Dr. Vergara is co-Principal Investigator.