| |
| Speakers |
| |
| Monday 26th June: |
| |
|
Professor Mark Borodovsky |
| Mark Borodovsky is Regents' Professor in the School of Biology at Georgia Institute of |
| Technology (USA) and founder of the biennial International Workshop on Bioinformatics in |
| Atlanta. His research focuses on computational analysis of genomic sequences for the |
| identification of functionally important features. Professor Borodovsky developed the highly |
| regarded GeneMark software for gene discovery. |
| |
|
Dr Tim Bailey |
| Tim Bailey is a Group Leader in genomics and computational biology at the Institute for |
| Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland, and an Investigator in the ARC Centre |
| in Bioinformatics. His web-based programs MEME (motif discovery), MAST (motif-based |
| search) and MetaMEME (motif discovery using HMMs) are used by more than 1000 |
| researchers internationally each month. Tim's research interests include molecular |
| biological applications of machine learning, data mining and statistics. |
| |
| Dr Paul Horton |
| Paul Horton is Research Fellow and a Group Leader in the sequence analysis team at the |
| Computational Biology Research Centre, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science, |
| Japan. Paul's research interests include development of search and database-mining |
| software for gene expression profiles, analysis of promoters and gene expression, prediction |
| of the subcellular localisation or proteins, and construction of a data source for analysis of |
| cell type based on gene expression data. |
| |
|
Dr Martin Frith |
| Martin Frith is a Research Associate jointly at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, and at |
| RIKEN Genomic Science Center, Japan. His research focuses on understanding, at the |
| nucleotide level, how genomes encode the information needed to build and maintain complex |
| organisms. He developed the GLAM (gapless alignment of multiple sequences) program for |
| discovery of functional motifs. |
| |
| Tuesday 27th June: |
| |
| Dr Regina Berretta |
| Regina Berretta is a Lecturer in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science |
| at the University of Newcastle, and a member of the Newcastle Bioinformatics Initiative. Her |
| research interests include combinatorial optimisation modelling with applications in |
| bioinformatics, and development of metaheutistic methods including Tabu search and |
| memetic algorithms. |
| |
| Dr Pablo Moscato |
| Pablo Moscato is Director of the Newcastle Bioinformatics Initiative (University of Newcastle, |
| Australia). His research interests include methods for combinatorial optimisation in |
| bioinformatics, exact and hybrid techniques for optimisation, mathematical modelling and |
| heuristics. His work in bioinformatics is primarily focused on mathematical models for mining |
| large-scale datasets, hierarchical clustering and phylogenetics, and analysis of gene- |
| expression data in neurodegenerative diseases and cancer. |
| |
|
Dr Tim Bailey |
| |
| Mr Paul Taylor |
| Paul Taylor is a senior applications engineer at Mathworks Australia. Mathworks is the |
| leading global provider of software for technical computing and model-based design. Paul |
| will present a workshop on MATLAb, a powerful interactive matrix-based environment for |
| scientific and engineering modelling and computation. MATLAb has a large user base in |
| Australia and overseas, and extensions are available for a number of application domains |
| including bioinformatics. |
| |
| Dr James J. Cai |
| James J. Cai is a Research Associate in the department of biological sciences at Stanford |
| University. He developed MATLAB-based programs MBEToolbox (for molecular evolution) |
| and PGEToolbox (for population genetics). His research interests include bioinformatics |
| relating to comparative and evolutionary genomics of fungi and other eukaryotes, and |
| statistical analysis of divergence and polymorphism of DNA sequence, aiming to identify |
| evolutionary patterns resulted from many evolutionary forces, such as natural selection, |
| genetic drift, mutation and migration. |
| |
| Public lecture: |
| |
| Dr Andrew Roger |
| Andrew Roger is an Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at |
| Dalhousie University in Canada, and Scotiabank Fellow in the Evolutionary Biology Program |
| of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. His research interests include the origin |
| and diversification of eukaryotes, models of protein evolution, molecular phylogenetics |
| and comparative genomics. Andrew will present an open public talk on the early molecular |
| events in the evolution of eukaryotes, with emphasis on (and spectacular photos of) |
| free-living and parasitic unicellular forms. |
| |
| Wednesday 28th June: |
| |
|
Professor Mike Hendy |
| Mike Hendy is Professor of mathematical biology at Massey University, and Director of the |
| Allen Wilson Centre for Molecular Biology and Evolution. His research focuses on the |
| mathematical modelling and phylogenetic analysis of biological sequence data, and |
| methods for comparison of graphs including chromatic polynomials. He introduced the |
| Hadamard conjugation (discrete Fourier transforms) to the analysis of DNA sequences. |
| |
|
Dr Barbara Holland |
| Barbara Holland is a Research Associate at the Allan Wilson Centre at Massey University, |
| NZ. Her current work involves the development of methods, such as consensus networks, to |
| display conflicting signals in phylogenetic data caused for example by hybridisation or lateral |
| genetic transfer. Barbara also investigates model specification and mis-specification in |
| phylogenetic inference. |
| |
|
Dr Michael Charleston |
| Mike Charleston is a Senior Lecturer in information technologies, and a member of the |
| Sydney University Biological Informatics and Technology Centre (SUBIT). His main area of |
| research is co-phylogeny, that is, the study of how groups of ecologically linked species |
| evolve with each other - for example, how parasites or pathogens continually evolve with |
| their hosts. Genes too can be considered to "parasitise" their "hosts" because they |
| undergo the same kinds of processes as do parasites and pathogens. Mike is also |
| interested in combinatorial optimisation, parallel search heuristics, phylogenetic inference |
| and molecular evolution. |
| |
|
Dr Charles Semple |
| Charles Semple is a Senior Lecturer in mathematics and statistics at University of |
| Canterbury, New Zealand. His research interests include discrete mathematics, matroids |
| (combinatorial geometries), and the mathematical foundations of modern phylogenetics. |
| |
|
Dr Alexei Drummond |
| Alexei Drummond is a Lecturer in bioinformatics in the Department of Computer Science |
| at the University of Auckland, a member of Bioinformatics Institute New Zealand, and a |
| principal in the bio-software company BioMatters Ltd. Alexei's research focuses on the |
| development of probabilistic models for understanding the evolution of genomes and viruses, |
| and their implementation in software. |
| |
| Thursday 29th June: |
| |
|
Dr Sean Grimmond |
| Sean Grimmond is a Group Leader in genomics and computational at the Institute for |
| Molecular Bioscience at The University of Queensland, head of IMB's microarray facility, |
| and an Investigator in the ARC Centre in Bioinformatics. He is also active in the FANTOM |
| and US National Institutes of Health Stem Cell Anatomy networks. Sean's research |
| focuses on characterising the mammalian transcriptome to elucidate the genetic events that |
| underlie biological processes such as kidney and blood vessel development. His group |
| combines approaches based on bioinformatics, microarray technologies and functional |
| genomics to define specific phenotypes of lead genes. |
| |
|
Professor Terry Speed |
| Terry Speed is Professor of statistics at the University of California, Berkeley and Head |
| of Division of Bioinformatics at the Walter & Eliza Hall Institutes of Medical Research, |
| Melbourne. Terry splits his time roughly 50:50 between these two institutes. His research |
| covers many aspects of the application of statistics to genetics and molecular biology, |
| including biomolecular sequence analysis, mapping of genes in experimental crosses and |
| human pedigrees, and analysis of gene-expression data. |
| |
| Dr Liat Ben-Tovim Jones |
| Liat Ben-Tovim Jones is a Research Associate in mathematics and in the Institute for |
| Molecular Bioscience at The University of Queensland, and in the ARC Centre in |
| Bioinformatics. Her research focuses on the analysis of gene-expression data from |
| microarrays. |
| |
| Dr Toni Reverter |
| Dr Antonio (Toni) Reverter is Principal research scientist with the Bioinformatics Group |
| of CSIRO Livestock Industries. Toni's background is in statistical genetics, more |
| specifically in methods for large-scale genetic evaluation and parameter estimation. His work |
| in CSIRO involves the statistical analysis of gene-expression and mapping data including |
| whole-genome SNP genotypes for complex traits in livestock. More specifically, he develops |
| and applies novel mathematical, computational and statistical methods to disentangle the |
| the information encapsulated in datasets generated by high-throughput genomic techniques. |
| Toni was the recipient of the inaugural 2005 Eureka Prize for Bioinformatics. |
| |
| Professor Kim-Anh Do |
| Kim-Ahh Do is Professor of biostatistics and applied mathematics at the University of |
| Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Her research interests include |
| computational statistics and biostatistics, bioinformatics, statistical genetics and |
| nonparametric statistical methods, including the bootstrap. |
| |
| Professor Geoff McLachlan |
| Geoff McLachlan is Professor of mathematics at The University of Queensland, Head of |
| UQ's Statistics Centre, and an Investigator in the ARC Centre in Bioinformatics. His |
| research interests include classification, cluster and discriminant analysis, and finite |
| models particularly as applied to microarray gene-expression data, as well as intelligent |
| systems, machine learning, pattern recognition and medical statistics. |
| |
| Friday 30th June: |
| |
|
Professor David Abramson |
| Dave Abramson is Professor of computer science at Monash University. His research |
| interests are in the design of high-performance computer systems and of software |
| engineering tools for programming parallel distributed supercomputers. He is well-known |
| internationally for Grid software tools including GriddLeS, middleware for construction of |
| complex workflows on the Grid using legacy software components; Guard, a relative |
| debugger (relative debugging allows a user to compare data between two executing |
| programs); and Nimrod, middleware for distributed parametric modelling on the global Grid. |
| |
| Professor Jane Hunter |
| Jane Hunter is Professor of information technology at The University of Queensland. |
| She is internationally recognised for work in the application of semantic web |
| technologies to the knowledge management and mining of large multimedia databases. |
| Her research focus is on the development of data models, ontologies, metadata standards, |
| schemas (RDF, XML), software tools and query languages to enable the indexing, archival, |
| discovery, analysis, integration, management and preservation of large mixed-media |
| collections within the educational, cultural and scientific domains, including the UK |
| Cancer Grid project. She is currently the liaison between MPEG (Moving Pictures Experts |
| Group) and W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), a member of the W3C Web Ontology |
| Language Working Group, and co-chair of APAN's (Asia Pacific Advanced Network) |
| eScience Working Group. |
| |
| Professor Ah Chung Tsoi |
| Ah Chung Tsoi is foundation Director of the e-Research Centre at Monash University, |
| and Chair of the Management Board of the DART e-research project. Before joining Monash, |
| Ah Chung was Executive Director for Mathematics, Information and Communications |
| Sciences at the Australian Research Council, and was involved in establishing the national |
| e-research agenda. Prior to joining ARC, he was Dean of the Faculty of Informatics, |
| and foundation Pro-Vice Chancellor Information and Communication Technology at the |
| University of Wollongong. |
| |
|
Dr David Hansen |
| David Hansen is with the e-Health Research Centre, a joint venture between the |
| Queensland Government and CSIRO. Before returning to Australia, David was development |
| manager for the SRS bioinformatic data integration software at LION Bioscience (UK) for |
| more than five years. In addition to his unique knowledge of the SRS software, David is |
| highly experienced with genomic data sources, and with the major open and commercial |
| software packages and tools used to analyse these data. He manages the Health Data |
| Integration project at e-Health Research Centre. |
| |
| Dr Tin Wee Tan |
| Tin Wee Tan is an Associate Professor of biochemistry at the Yong Loo Lin School |
| of Medicine, National University of Singapore. He was founding Director of NUS's |
| Bioinformatics Centre, the Singapore Advanced Research and Education Network, |
| founding signatory to the Asia Pacific Advanced Network, founding head of the Internet |
| Research and Development Unit, founder and retired chairman of Asia Pacific |
| Networking Group, past chairman of the ASEAN SubCommittee on Biotechnology, and |
| retired president of the Association of Medical and BioInformatics in Singapore. |
| He is actively promoting the ASEAN Science and Technology Research and Education |
| Network and Education Network Alliance, the S* Life Science Informatics Alliance, |
| the Asia Pacific Bioinformatics Network, Multilingual Internet Names Consortium, |
| and serves on the boards of the International Society for Computational Biology, |
| the International Conference on Bioinformatics, the International Life Science Grid |
| Workshop, and Keppel Telecommunications and Transportation Ltd. Tin Wee's research |
| interests include making the Internet deeply multilingual, developing disability resources |
| on the Internet, and building regional advanced research networks. |
