Each month, we profile someone connected to CBRC, featuring them in The Update, our monthly newsletter. Check out the Sept 2025 newsletter here.
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Malhar Shah (she/her) is CBRC’s Data Analyst. She graduated from the University of British Columbia with a BSc in Microbiology and Immunology and spent time working in wet labs before realizing her heart was in public health research, and pursued a Masters of Epidemiology at McGill University.
“It felt more real and tangible than looking at a protein or cell,” she shares. “I wanted to explore how our abilities to live healthy lives are affected, constrained, and facilitated by different systemic factors—how those factors affect how we move through the world.”
She joined the CBRC team in 2024, and since then, has been involved in survey programming, cleaning data, and analysis—providing feedback, guidance, and consulting on research methods. “I like that I get to work on a very diverse set of topics—I’m always learning something new about different research areas, through data. I just really love getting nerdy about numbers!”
Malhar is especially interested in centering trans women and transfeminine people in research. “I’m really interested in troubling our preconceptions around biological sex, and how we think about gender and sex, especially when it comes to healthcare.” She is particularly passionate about gender affirming healthcare—“especially in this climate, it’s so politicized. It’s one of the key points that politicians and folks in power are applying pressure on,” she says.
“I want to do right by transfeminine communities, to collect better data and analyze it in ways that are reflective of our experiences.” Malhar stresses the importance of research by and for our communities—“we need to do health research in ways that allow us to advocate for better access to lifesaving care.”
For Malhar, statistics aren’t just a feature of her workplace. She is a huge hockey fan, and her love of statistics meets her love of the sport—she likes to analyze data from the Professional Women’s Hockey League and the National Hockey League. “I love making little graphs and trying to answer questions. I'm always thinking of different methods that I can use to answer those questions.” Some of her hockey analyses include a statistical exploration of the coaching bump phenomenon in the NHL, and whether or not winning a faceoff contributes to a team’s overall likelihood of winning a game.
In her spare time, she also enjoys birding, exploring nature, and photographing wildlife. Her favourite bird is the belted kingfisher—“but I call them queenfishers!”
Photo: Malhar Shah
“Health is political. Queer liberation includes getting all the healthcare that we need.”
