Annual research symposium slated for April 9 at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute
The Virginia Bioinformatics Institute's Research Symposium will feature an array of cutting-edge research topics from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on April 9.
Research groups and laboratories will give presentations about projects underway at the institute, including advances in network dynamics, medical informatics, immunoinformatics, and high-performance computing, among others.
A talk on the institute's new Mathematical Biocomplexity Laboratory, led by Christian Reidys, a professor at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, will precede the keynote address by Michael Waterman, a professor of biological sciences, mathematics, and computer science at University of Southern California-Dornsife.
In the late 1980s, Waterman pioneered several mathematical techniques that led to the founding of bioinformatics and have spawned the evolution of mathematical biocomplexity.
He developed the Smith-Waterman algorithm for sequence comparison, which revolutionized the way scientists look at genomic sequences. A Guggenheim Fellow and one of the few residents of the Western Hemisphere to receive the Friendship Prize from the People's Republic of China, he is also the founding editor of Computational Biology and the author of Introduction to Computational Biology: Maps. Sequences, and Genomes.
A reception and poster presentation will follow. The event is free and open to the public but registration is required. Please register at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute website or email Kimberly Borkowski for more information.The institute is located at 1015 Life Science Circle on the Blacksburg campus.
Visitors may park in any faculty, staff, visitor, or student parking space if they have a valid visitor parking permit and if the space is not restricted by signs. Visitor parking permits are available at the Visitor Center, 925 Prices Fork Road, during regular business hours or at the Virginia Tech Police Department in the Maintenance Complex off Southgate Drive at all other times. Go here for more parking information.
