Friday, 19 July 2013 – room 43

Saturday, 20 July 2013 – room 43

Atul Butte, MD, PhD
Presentation Title: Translating a trillion points of data into therapies, diagnostics, and new insights into disease

Abstract: There is an urgent need to translate genome-era discoveries into clinical utility, but the difficulties in making bench-to-bedside translations have been well described. The nascent field of translational bioinformatics may help. Dr. Butte’s lab at Stanford builds and applies tools that convert more than a trillion points of molecular, clinical, and epidemiological data – measured by researchers and clinicians over the past decade – into diagnostics, therapeutics, and new insights into disease. Dr. Butte, a bioinformatician and pediatric endocrinologist, will highlight his lab’s work on using publicly-available molecular measurements to find new uses for drugs including drug repositioning for inflammatory bowel disease, discovering new treatable inflammatory mechanisms of disease in type 2 diabetes, and the evaluation of patients presenting with whole genomes sequenced.

Short Bio: Atul Butte, MD, PhD is Chief of the Division of Systems Medicine and Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Medicine, and by courtesy, Computer Science, at Stanford University and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. Dr. Butte trained in Computer Science at Brown University, worked as a software engineer at Apple and Microsoft, received his MD at Brown University, trained in Pediatrics and Pediatric Endocrinology at Children's Hospital Boston, then received his PhD in Health Sciences and Technology from Harvard Medical School and MIT. Dr. Butte is also a founder of Personalis, providing clinical interpretation of whole genome sequences, and NuMedii, finding new uses for drugs. Dr. Butte has authored more than 120 publications on personalized and systems medicine, biomedical informatics, and molecular diabetes. Dr. Butte's research has been featured in the New York Times Science Times and the International Herald Tribune (2008), Wall Street Journal (2010 -2012), and San Jose Mercury News (2010).

Nikolaus Rajewsky, PhD
Presentation Title: Circular RNAs and other surprises from analysis of RNA:protein interactions

Short Bio: In 1997, Nikolaus Rajewsky received his PhD in theoretical physics at the University of Cologne. After working in Joel Lebowitz's lab at Rutgers University on statistical mechanics, he joined Eric Siggia's group at Rockefeller University where, in 1999, his attention turned to biological problems. He began work on transcriptional gene regulation in E. coli and later on in metazoans. In 2003 he became an Assistant Professor of Biology and Mathematics in the Biology Department at New York University, co-associated with the Courant Institute for Mathematical Sciences, where his work on small RNAs – in particular microRNAs – began. In 2006 he became a full professor of Systems Biology at the Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin, associated with the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin. He conceived and directs the Berlin Institute for Systems Biology. In 2008, he received the IUBMB medal for outstanding contributions to Biochemistry and the anniversary prize of the German Society for Biochemistry, awarded by FEBS. Dr. Rajewsky is also 'Global Distinguished Professor of Biology' at New York University. In January 2010, he received the Science Award of the Governing Mayor of Berlin and recently he has been honored with Germany’s most important research award, the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize.

We regret that, Jun Wang will not be giving his keynote, but urgent matters prevent him from attending the conference.

Jun Wang, PhD

Short Bio: Jun Wang is the Executive Director of the BGI (previously known as the Beijing Genomics Institute). He was instrumental in the 1999 founding and the growth of the BGI Bioinformatics Department, which is now widely recognized as one of world’s premier research facilities committed to excellence in genome sciences. Dr. Wang also holds a position as an Ole Rømer professor at the University of Copenhagen. He has authored 200+ peer-reviewed original papers – of which 73 are published in Cell, Nature (including Nature series), N Engl J Med., and Science (23 as cover story). Among those 73, Jun Wang is the first/co-first author or corresponding/co-corresponding author for 48 (13 as cover) of them. He has been recognized with an award from His Royal Highness Prince Foundation in Denmark, Nature’s 10 - the year in Science (2012); an Outstanding Science and Technology Achievement from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Top 10 Scientific Achievements in China, and the prize for Important Innovation and Contribution from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on genomics and related bioinformatics analysis of complex diseases and agricultural crops, with the goal of developing applications using the genomic information.