BioSysBio 2007 was held in January at Manchester Conference Centre, in collaboration with the Manchester Interdisciplinary Bioscience Centre, University of Manchester. Aimed at students, post-docs and junior faculty working in biotechnology, the conference included sessions in Computational Systems Biology, Bioinformatics and Synthetic Biology. A new session highlighted some of the UK entries in the MIT-based International Genetically Engineered Machines competition (iGEM).
The event proved a huge success with 300 delegates from across the UK, Europe and rest of the world making up a young, dynamic audience from these cutting edge research areas. The impressive list of speakers gave superb talks on a wide range of topics, while graduate students and young faculty were given the opportunity to present their work to their piers, through a series of talks alongside the highly-regarded session chairs.
BioSysBio 2007 talks available on Google Video
2007 Abstracts published in BMC Systems Biology
Past Speakers - BioSysBio 2007
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Hans V. Westerhoff - University of Manchester Systems Biology, hierarchies, and robustness: bringing information to Life Hans Westerhoff is Professor of Systems Biology at Manchester University and also Professor of Microbial Pysiology (Free University Amsterdam, VUA) and Professor of Mathematical Biochemistry (University of Amsterdam, UvA) at the BioCentrum Amsterdam. He heads a transnational research group on Systems Biology which spans the Manchester Centre for Integrative Systems Biology (MCISB) in the Manchester Interdisciplinary BioCentre (MIB) and the BioCentrum Anmsterdam (see also http://www.bio.vu.nl/hwconf ). His research interest focuses on how the interactions of macromolecules can lead to biological functioning, and integrates quantitative expermentation with mathematical analyses. |
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Alfonso Valencia - Universidad Autonoma Madrid Alfonso Valencia is a biologist by training. Since 1986 he has been working in the field of Bioinformatics (initially combined with experimental approaches). From 1988 to 1994 he worked at the EMBL-Heidelberg in the group of Chris Sander, studying the evolution of protein function with a combination of sequence and structure based approaches. In 1994 he started his own group in Madrid, the Protein Design Group (PDG). |
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Ron Weiss is an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University, and also holds a faculty appointment in the Department of Molecular Biology. He received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering (2001). His research focuses primarily on Synthetic Biology, where he programs cell behavior by constructing and modeling biochemical and cellular computing systems |
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Roland Eils - DKFZ (German Cancer Research Centre) Gene regulation and profiling Roland Eils is the head of the Department of Bioinformatics and Functional Genetics at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Heidelberg as well as head of the Department of Theoretical Bioinformatics at the DKFZ (German Cancer Research Centre). He specializes in gene regulation and expression profiles from microarrays. |
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Douglas Kell - University of Manchester, UK Metabolomics and machine learning: quantitative bioanalysis for systems biology Douglas Kell is the Director of the Manchester Centre for Integrative Systems Biology (MCISB) based in the Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre (MIB) His research covers a broad range of topics from analytical chemistry to systems biology, usually coupled to biochemical and data modeling. University of Manchester, UK |
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Nicolas Le Novere - European Bioinformatics Institute, UK Modeling and databases in systems Biology After graduate and postdoctoral work in Paris and Cambridge (UK), Nicolas Le Novere now runs a research group at the EBI (European Bioinformatics Institute) near to Cambridge, UK. His previous work in Systems Biology includes the development of SBML (the Systems Biology Markup Language), the modeling of signaling systems and BioModels Database. |
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Herbert Sauro - University of Washington, USA Modeling and modularity, tools for systems biology Herbert Sauro is one of the authors of the Systems Biology Workbench, a collection of tools that allows the sharing and cross compatibility of models using the Systems Biology Markup Language, which he also pioneered the development of. He also has also written other tools for Systems Biology including drag and drop modeling tool Jdesigner and the simulation tool Jarnac. His current research focuses on functional modularity in Cellular Networks. |
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Sarah Teichmann - Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK Gene regulatory networks, Structural and Computational Genomics Sarah Teichmann works on the evolution of protein-protein and protein-nucleic acid interaction at the level of both protein structure and comparative genomics. Over the past few years, she has been focusing on the functional annotation of DNA-binding transcription factors, and their evolution and dynamic expression. Recently, this computational research has been complemented by experimental molecular biology in her group at Cambridge. |
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Chris Voigt - UCSF (University of California, San Diego) USA Synthetic Biology As a pioneer in Synthetic Biology, Chris Voigt is producing standard biological parts that function like electrical devices in cells. His joint iGEM team last year produced "E. coli that could see light" and his recent research includes bacteria capable of spinning silk and invasion of cancer cells by engineered bacteria. |
Organising Committee 2007
John Cumbers
Brown University, USA
A graduate student at Brown University, Rhode Island, USA. His research interests are centered around ageing. This includes the study of the molecular pathways that extend lifespan and currently uses both computational and wetlab techniques for modelling gene regulatory networks and predicting transcription factor binding sites.
Dr Jonathan Rees
UK Bioinformatics Forum
Project Manager for UK Bioinformatics Forum. Prior to that Jon spent 3 years as a post-doctoral research officer at the University of Oxford. He is also the founder of Bioinformatics.Net, one of the leading online directories of bioinformatics software.
Manuel Corpas
University of Manchester, UK
Manuel's research has focused on the development of bioinformatics techniques that combine sequence and structure protein data for characterisation of evolutionarily determinant protein regions. More specifically, his research systematically discriminates functional and structural motifs based on a protein folding score. His research involved computational statistics, machine learning and visualisation techniques.
Program Committee 2007
James Atherton - John Innes Center, UK
James Brown - University of Cambridge, UK
Frank Bruggeman - Free University Amsterdam, Netherlands
Manuel Corpas - University of Manchester, UK
Luna De Ferrari - University of Edinburgh, UK
Derek Gatherer - University of Glasgow, UK
Nils Gehlenborg - European Bioinformatics Institute, UK
Julia Handl - University of Manchester, UK
Indrani Halder - Pennsylvania State University, USA
Sarah Luger - University of Edinburgh, UK
Younes Mokrab - University of Cambridge, UK
Vijaya Parthiban - Cologne University, Germany
Ramazan Saeed - Oxford University, UK
Venkata P. Satagopam - EMBL Heidelberg, Germany
Dominic Tolle - European Bioinformatics Institute, UK
Ole Schulz-Trieglaff - Free University of Berlin, Germany
Najl Valeyev - University of Oxford, UK
James Wasmuth - Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada
Joanna Young - University of Edinburgh, UK
Scientific Advisory Board 2007
Douglas Armstrong - University of Edinburgh, UK
Terri Attwood - University of Manchester, UK
Geoff Barton - University of Dundee,UK
Jason Crain - University of Edinburgh, UK
Darren Flower - Edward Jenning Institute, UK
Derek Gatherer - MRC Virology Unit, Glasgow, UK
David Gilbert - Glasgow University, UK
Jane Hillston - University of Edinburgh, UK
Alastair Kerr - University of Edinburgh, UK
Tom Kirkwood - University of Newcastle, UK
Nicholas Luscombe - European Bioinformatics Institute, UK
Andrew Millar - University of Edinburgh, UK
Jose Pereira-Leal - Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia, Portugal
Colin Semple - University of Edinburgh, UK
Jaroslav Stark - Imperial College London, UK
Panke Sven - ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Bonnie Webber - University of Edinburgh, UK
Hans V. Westerhoff - University of Manchester, UK