AMES, Iowa -- Iowa State University will host the Sixth Annual Joint Bioinformatics Symposium, July 13-14. This year's conference will focus on systems biology.
Initiated in 2000 by Iowa State and the University of Iowa, Iowa City, the event is expanded this year to include ISU's new bioinformatics partner, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. The conference fosters interaction and collaboration among students and faculty conducting computational biology research at the participating universities.
Participants will hear presentations by leading researchers, including Vladimir Filkov, computer science, University of California, Davis; Christina Grozinger, entomology, W.M. Keck Center for Behavioral Biology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh; Anuj Kumar, molecular, cellular and developmental biology, Life Sciences Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and Heng Zhu, pharmacology, High Throughput (HiT) Biology Center, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore.
The conference also will feature presentations by faculty and students from participating schools, as well as a student research poster session.
The symposium will open at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, July 13, at Reiman Gardens with a welcome reception and research presentations. It continues at 8:30 a.m. Friday, July 14, at the Memorial Union with a full day of research presentations, a poster session and announcement of awards for best student posters and presentations.
Conference registration is free for students, faculty and staff from participating schools. Graduate students, faculty and staff from Midwest universities also have been invited to attend. Symposium details and registration are online at http://www.ucs.iastate.edu/bioinformatics.
Iowa State University sponsors include the National Science Foundation's Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training Grant in Computational Molecular Biology; U. S. Department of Agriculture's Multidisciplinary Graduate Education and Training Grant in Computational Biology for Animal Agriculture; Office of Biotechnology; Laurence H. Baker Center for Bioinformatics and Biological Statistics; The Center for Integrated Animal Genomics; and the Miller Endowment Fund for Departmental Lectures.
Iowa State's interdepartmental graduate program in bioinformatics and computational biology involves 60 students and 81 faculty in 16 academic departments.