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SC 09 Focuses on Bio-Computing

September 23, 2009

By Matthew Dublin

Super Computing 09 has just released an announcement that shows they're making good on this year's bio-computing thrust area. According to the release, the Department of Energy's Genomic Science Program will be hosting a workshop called "Using Clouds for Parallel Computations in Systems Biology" which will explore on-demand access to computing resources and systems biology applications. So far, presenters at the Bio-Computing thrust area will include the following:

Deepak Singh, Business Development Manager at Amazon and noted expert on cloud computing and other new technology strategies: Big Data and Biology: The Implications of Petascale Science. Singh will examine how HPC technology is making biology an increasingly data intensive science, fundamentally challenging traditional approaches to storing, managing, sharing and analyzing data while maintaining a meaningful biological context. He will discuss leveraging new paradigms and trends in distributed computing infrastructure and utility models.

David Haussler, professor of biomolecular engineering and leader of the Genome Bioinformatics Group at the University of California, Santa Cruz: The Supercomputing Challenge to Decode the Evolution and Diversity of Our Genomes. He will focus on advances in DNA sequencing technologies and genomic reconstructions of common mammalian ancestors of 100 million years ago. The ultimate goal is to understand the molecular tinkering that transformed our animal ancestors into humans.

Jonathan Silverstein, professor of surgery and associate director of the Computation Institute of the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory: Grid Technology Transforming Healthcare. He will focus on how our healthcare system is being transformed by new HPC techniques that promote integration, interoperability and secured access to biomedical data on a national scale. This session will survey HealthGrid issues and projects across clinical care, public health, education and research.