Speakers
Genome Research
Leonard Anderson, Assistant Professor of Medicine and co-director of the Functional Genomics Core Facility, Morehouse School of MedicineDr. Anderson's research laboratory is focused on cardiovascular genomics. In particular, the modulation of the cellular transcriptome during early vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) fate determination from pluripotent stem cells in cell-based and murine models of differentiation and development.
Charles Boone, Professor and Howard Hughes International Research Scholar, University of Toronto
Dr. Boone's research focuses on clarifying the molecular mechanisms by which fungal MAP kinase signal transduction cascades regulate polarized morphogenesis, the process by which fungal cells switch from the unicellular to the filamentous form, and on the topology and global mapping of genetic interaction networks for eukaryotic cells, using the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model system.
Proteome Research
Richard Caprioli, Stanley Cohen Professor of Biochemistry and Director of the Mass Spectrometry Research Center Vanderbilt University School of MedicineDr. Caprioli's research interests target biological processes involving the synthesis, modification, storage and degradation of peptides and proteins. He has been at the forefront of developing and applying modern in situ mass spectrometric methods of analysis, including electrospray and matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization mass spectrometry, to follow molecular processes and their disruption by xenobiotics.
Jennifer van Eyk, Associate Professor, Heart and Stroke Career Investigator, Director of the Hopkins NHLBI Proteomics Center and the Bayview Proteomics Group, Johns Hopkins University
Dr. Van Eyk's research combines physiology and proteomics to provide an in-depth analysis of the molecular basis for a variety of cardiac and skeletal muscle diseases ranging from myocardial stunning and heart failure to respiratory muscle injury in obstructive lung diseases and sepsis, and using this information to develop new serum biomarkers and potential therapeutic targets.
Garry Nolan, Associate Professor and Director of the Stanford University Proteomics Center, Stanford University
Dr. Nolan's laboratory focuses on signaling in the immune system and the study of host processes that HIV-1 exploits. Prominent targets of this research are the control of apoptosis, autoimmunity, angiogenesis, retrovirology, and blockade of HIV-1 infection. Nolan has been developing a range of advanced flow cytometric assays, cDNA and peptide expression systems using viruses, as well as methods for single-cell genetic selection.
Metabolome Research
Alfred Merrill, Professor and Smithgall Chair in Molecular Cell Biology, Georgia Institute of TechnologyDr. Merrill's group studies a category of lipids (termed sphingolipids) that are important in cell structure, cell-cell communication and signal transduction and regulate diverse cell behaviors, including growth and programmed cell death (apoptosis). A focus is on how disease results from disruption of these pathways by (for examples) food borne mycotoxins, environmental contaminants, venoms, and other agents. Studies of naturally occurring and synthetic analogs of these compounds are leading to new strategies for disease prevention and treatment, particularly for certain forms of cancer.
Helena Santos, Professor and Group Leader for Cell Physiology and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal
Dr. Santos has been instrumental in the development of in vivo and in vitro NMR techniques as the main tool for investigating carbon and phosphorus metabolism in different organisms, especially in microbial strains with industrial or environmental relevance. Major research effort is directed to thermoadaptation strategies in hyperthermophiles and metabolic genomics of lactic acid bacteria; secondary areas include energy metabolism of primary brain cell cultures and determination of NMR structures of haemproteins.
Molecular Inventories and Databases
Minoru Kanehisa, Professor and Director, Bioinformatics Center, Institute for Chemical Research, Kyoto University, and Professor, Human Genome Center, Institute of Medical Science, University of TokyoDr. Kanehisa's group is developing bioinformatics methods to integrate different types of data and knowledge on biological systems towards basic understanding of life as a molecular interaction/reaction system and also for practical applications in medical and pharmaceutical sciences. He is the lead creator of KEGG: Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes, a database very widely used by scientists all over the world.
Peter Karp, Director, Bioinformatics Research Group, Artificial Intelligence Center. SRI International
Dr. Karp is the lead author and creator of internationally well-recognized data base collections that include EcoCyc: Encyclopedia of Escherichia coli Genes and Metabolism, MetaCyc: Metabolic Pathway Database, Pathway Tools, Grasper: An Interactive Network Editor and Graphical Database, and the BioCyc Database Collection. By the end of 2006, EcoCyc alone was cited almost 15,000 times.
Hirotada Mori, Professor, Institute for Advanced Biosciences, Keio University, and Professor, Center for Genetic Information and Bioinformatics, Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Nara, Japan
Dr. Mori's is interested in understanding a cellular system like E. coli in sufficient detail to allow the construction of a dynamic molecular model of a cell that is predictive in describing the relationships between molecules, phenotypes and genotypes. As one major achievement, Dr. Mori's group has established complete sets of resources, including one for plasmid clones of all predicted ORFs and one for clean deletion mutants of individual ORFs.
Ajay Royyuru, Head Computational Biology Center at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center
Dr. Royyuru leads a team of 35 researchers in a wide range of projects that include bioinformatics, structural biology, life sciences research on the Blue Gene supercomputer, functional genomics, systems biology, medical informatics, and personalized, information-based medicine.
Modeling and Simulation
Douglas Lauffenburger, Uncas and Helen Whitaker Professor of Bioengineering, Director, Biological Engineering Division, Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyDr. Lauffenburger's research interests fall into three areas, namely cell signaling and regulatory networks, cell/substratum adhesion/signaling and migration, and the design of biomolecular therapeutics. His large research group addresses these areas with a combination of experimental studies, methods development, and mathematical modeling of systems dynamics.
Michael Savageau, Distinguished Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of California at Davis
Dr. Savageau is one of the true pioneers of biological systems analysis and the creator of Biochemical Systems Theory. Specific goals of his current research include elucidating the design features in elementary gene circuits, enlarging the scope of the search for predictable patterns of gene circuitry to include different mechanisms of signal transduction and control by global regulators, and continuing the development of new methodologies for the quantitative analysis of large genomic-scale systems.
Masaru Tomita, Professor and Director, Institute for Advanced Biosciences, Keio University, Japan
Dr. Tomita's interests lie in the areas of bioinformatics and metabolomics. He is the founder and director of the E-Cell Project, a large effort to develop a computational model of an entire cell. Research in his institute includes various types of high-throughput biology, method development, and mathematical and computational modeling.
Raimond Winslow, Professor and Director, Institute for Computational Medicine; Director, Center for Cardiovascular Bioinformatics and Modeling; Associate Director, The Whitaker Biomedical Engineering Institute, Johns Hopkins University
Dr. Winslow is interested in computational, integrative modeling of key processes related to cardiac functioning, from sub-cellular to whole-organ scales and the development of cardiac diseases. Pursuing questions within this complex system, he applies grid computing and machine learning methods to multi-scale biomedical data analysis, develops biomedical data representations and databases, and uses mathematical modeling to bridge between levels of organization.
Enabling Technologies
David Bader, Executive Director of High-Performance Computing, Computational Science and Engineering Division, College of Computing, Georgia Institute of TechnologyDr. Bader is a widely recognized leader in high performance computing. The main areas of his research are in parallel algorithms, combinatorial optimization, and large-scale computing in genomics and evolutionary biology.
Kim Baldridge, Professor, Institut für Organische Chemie, Universität Zürich, Switzerland
Dr. Baldridge's research involves utilization of computationally derived chemical and physical properties, in conjunction with experiments, to enhance the understanding of control within technologically important chemical structures and reaction processes. Emphasis is placed on enhancements of quantum chemical algorithms specifically for application to conformational equilibria and dynamics, understanding and control of the detailed nature of the aromatic structure and character in materials, and the structure and dynamics of reactions in solution phase.
Sorin Istrail, Julie Nguyen Brown Professor of Computational and Mathematical Sciences, Brown University
Dr. Istrail is interested in computational biology, computer science, and statistical physics. Specific areas include gene regulatory networks, the development of a programming language for genomics, algorithm theory for protein folding, and complexity on biology.
Klaus Schulten, Swanlund Professor of Physics and Director of the Theoretical Biophysics Group, University of Illinois
Dr. Schulten utilizes advances in physical theory and computing to model organisms across many levels of organization, from molecules to cells to networks. The research has been driven by problems in biomedicine, such as understanding neural development and processing, solving the mechanisms of bioenergetic proteins, the recognition and regulation of DNA by proteins, and most recently determining transport through aquaporins.
Cancer
Gang Bao, Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Lead Scientist, Nanomedicine Center, Georgia Institute of TechnologyDr. Bao's research focuses on developing bionanotechnology and biomolecular engineering approaches for basic biological studies and medicine. Current methodology development includes molecular beacons, magnetic nanoparticle probes, quantum dot bioconjugates, filtration-based protein microarrays, organelle chips and lipid microarrays, and engineered nanodevices driven by biomolecular motors.
John McDonald, Professor and Chair, Department of Biology, Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. McDonald's research addresses the role of retrotransposons in the alteration of chromatin structure and other epigenetic changes associated with tumorgenesis. In collaboration with the Ovarian Cancer Institute (Atlanta), his group is engaged in efforts to identify molecular markers of early staged ovarian cancers using microarray, 2-D gel and mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF) technologies.
Jeffrey Skolnick, Professor and Director, Center for the Study of Systems Biology; GRA Eminent Scholar, Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Skolnick's research group develops tools for the prediction of protein structure and function from sequence; functional genomics; automatic assignment of enzymes to metabolic pathways, prediction of protein tertiary and quaternary structure and folding pathways; prediction of membrane protein tertiary structure, prediction of small molecule ligands for drug discovery, prediction of druggable protein targets, drug design, equilibrium and dynamic properties of lipid bilayers; simulation of virus coat protein assembly.
Synthetic Biology
Jay Keasling, Professor of Chemical Engineering, University of California at Berkeley, and Director of the Physical Biosciences Division of Lawrence Berkeley National LaboratoryDr. Keasling's research focuses on the metabolic engineering of microorganisms for the degradation of environmental contaminants or for environmentally friendly synthesis. To that end, his group has developed new genetic and mathematical tools for more precise and reproducible control of metabolism. These tools are being used in such applications as synthesis of biodegradable polymers, accumulation of phosphate and heavy metals, degradation of chlorinated and aromatic hydrocarbons, biodesulfurization of fossil fuels, and complete mineralization of organophosphate nerve agents and pesticides.
Pamela Silver, Professor of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Silver's research focuses on several major areas in biology from a systems-wide point of view. Our experiments use a range of approaches and technologies and employ model organisms as well as mammalian cells. Specific areas include the organization and optimization of nuclear networks, synthetic biology and logical designs for cellular tasks, the dynamics of RNA, and the study of perturbations in cellular networks.
Neural Systems
Upinder S. Bhalla, Project Leader, The National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bangalore, IndiaDr. Bhalla is an internationally recognized expert on the functioning of the brain at the micro and macro levels. His group employs experimental methods, including parallel electrical recordings and behavioral studies, which are combined with computational systems studies at levels ranging from the genome to molecular control circuits, signaling pathways, neural networks, and, ultimately, the circuitry of the brain.
Maryann Martone, Professor-in-Residence, Department of Neurosciences, and Co-Director of the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research (NCMIR), University of California San Diego
Dr. Martone's work addresses central nervous system (CNS) morphology, protein localization, imaging of neurons and their processes, neuronal alterations that occur as a consequence of ischemia, and the emerging field of neuroinformatics. She is involved in numerous multiscale investigations of mouse models of human neurological disease. Dr. Martone has emerged as an international leader in the rapidly evolving field of new technologies for high-resolution imaging. Her recent work has focused on building ontologies for describing the subcellular anatomy of the nervous system, and integrating the ontology into image analysis and data mining tools.
Ecological and Environmental Systems
Mark Hay, Professor and Harry and Linda Teasely Chair in Environmental Biology, Georgia Institute of Technology.Dr. Hay uses field experimentation to assess how consumer-prey interactions, competition, and physical stresses interact to determine community structure and ecosystem function in temperate vs. tropical oceans, and in marine vs. freshwater systems. His lab places special emphasis on contrasting plant-herbivore and predator-prey interactions in marine, terrestrial, and freshwater communities, on alterations in these interactions over spatial scales ranging from centimeters to hundreds of kilometers, and on understanding the role of chemical defenses in mediating biotic interactions.
Frank Löffler, Carlton Wilder Associate Professor of Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology.
Dr. Löffler is a recognized leader in bioremediation and in transitioning scientific advances to field applications. His group explores the physiology, ecology and genetics of microbes carrying out environmentally relevant processes. The four interrelated focal areas, microbial detoxification of environmental pollutants, bioremediation applications, molecular tools for bioprocess monitoring, and novel bacteria, all address fundamental research questions, some with medical relevance, and others with environmentally applied components.
Victor de Lorenzo, Professor of Research, National Center of Biotechnology of the Spanish Research Council in Madrid (Spain); Member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO); Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.
Dr. de Lorenzo's research focuses on the molecular biology, microbial ecology, and genetic engineering of microorganisms for environmental release for bioremediation and biosensing of toxic chemicals. Ongoing projects in his Laboratory include the metabolic control of gene expression in environmental bacteria and the evolutionary expansion of biodegradation networks. His current interests comprise the use of Systems Biology and Synthetic Biology approaches for evolving and designing superior microbial catalysts aimed at removal or recycling of industral waste.
Elizabeth Wellington, Professor, Systems Biology Centre, University of Warwick, U.K., Director of the European Union SYSMO (System Biology of Microorganism) project.
Dr. Wellington's research interests focus on understanding the ecological roles for specific bacterial activities, including antibiotic production and exoenzyme production in soil, and analyzing the impact of lateral gene transfer on adaptation. In her work, she has also been involved in the development of a suite of techniques for cell capture, flow cytometry and cell sorting, microbial community profiling, metagenomic libraries and statistical analysis of molecular data, as well as the diversity and distribution of antibiotic resistance genes.