Keynote speakers
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Tom Knight Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, MIT Following an unrivaled career in computer science and electronic engineering, developing key networking systems such as ARPANET, Tom Knight studied biochemistry, genetics and cell biology, and promptly set up a biology lab within MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science. He promptly came up with the concept of the BioBrick and began creating a library of genetic parts that could be used to rationally engineer biological systems. In collaboration with his then graduate student, Ron Weiss, Tom has written seminal research papers describing the application of engineering principles to biology and continues to actively pursue the design and automated construction of biological devices and systems. Tom is credited with founding the emergent and promising field of synthetic biology. |
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Hanspeter Herzel Hanspeter Herzel graduated in physics and studied several aspects of stochastic and chaotic dynamical systems. In order to explore the role of deterministic chaos in real-world systems he applied data analysis techniques to physicochemical systems, climatic time-series, and physiological rhythms. During his Heisenberg fellowship Hanspeter established a new research field – the nonlinear dynamics of voice production. Biomechanical modelling and high-speed recordings of vocal fold vibrations revealed nonlinear phenomena in newborns cries, voice pathologies and animal vocalizations. In 1996 he became a co-founder of the Institute for Theoretical Biology at Humboldt University Berlin. Research topics are the statistical analysis of sequences and high-throughput data combined with kinetic modelling. Currently the quantification of signalling cascades and gene regulation networks are applied to RAS-signalling, liver regeneration and the mammalian circadian clock. Here he developed together with Achim Kramer models of intracellular feedback loops and of synchronization mechanisms. |
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Denis Noble Denis Noble is Emeritus Professor of Cardiovascular Physiology. He now directs the computational physiology research group. He was the first to model cardiac cells (in two papers in Nature in 1960) and has published over 350 research papers. Dennis is one of the leaders of Systems Biology and has written the first popular book on Systems Biology, The MUSIC of LIFE (OUP, 2006). |
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Thomas Höfer Thomas studied biophysics in Berlin and received his DPhil in mathematical biology from the University of Oxford. He develops dynamic models of signal transduction and gene-regulatory networks in eukaryotic cells, collaborating closely with biochemists, cell biologists and immunologists. After postdoctoral work at the College de France and the Max Planck Institute for Physics of Complex Systems, he became junior professor of theoretical biophysics at Humboldt University Berlin. In 2007 he moved to the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg to head the new research group 'Modelling of Biological Systems' at the interface of theoretical and experimental systems biology. |
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Session speakers
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Tom Freeman Tom Freeman obtained his Ph.D. at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital, London. He was a researcher in the Department of Cellular Physiology at the Babraham Institute, Cambridge, them a team leader of the gene expression group at the Sanger Institute, Hinxton, Cambridge. Prior to moving to Edinburgh, Dr Freeman was the Microarray Programme Leader, responsible for the overall direction of the scientific and service objectives of the Microarray Programme at the MC Rosalind Franklin Centre for Genomics Research in the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Cambridge. Currently, Dr Freeman's group is developing strategies for the identification of genes involved in immune signalling pathways, particularly apoptosis that might act as targets for gene therapy of infectious and immune diseases. |
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Jim Haseloff Jim Haseloff is a plant biologist working at the Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge. His scientific interests are focused on the engineering of plant morphogenesis, using microscopy, molecular genetic, computational and synthetic biology techniques. Prior to joining Department of Plant Sciences, Jim served as group leader at MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge and his group developed advanced imaging techniques and modified fluorescent proteins for efficient use in plants. Before this, Jim served as research fellow at Harvard Medical School, working on trans-splicing ribozymes. He also served as postdoctoral fellow at CSIRO, Division of Plant Industry, Canberra, and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge. He developed methods for the design of synthetic RNA enzymes with novel substrate specificities. Jim attended University of Adelaide where he studied RNA genetics of viroids and earned a Doctorate degree in 1983. His core expertise includes synthetic biology, developmental genetics, computational biology, molecular biology, microscopy and scientific visualisation techniques and an interest in homebrew instrumentation. Jim is deeply involved with teaching Synthetic Biology at the University of Cambridge, and is very interested in its wider potential as a teaching tool for biology. |
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Jean Peccoud Jean Peccoud received his Ph.D. in molecular biology and bioinformatics from the University of Grenoble, France, in 1991. Prior to joining VBI, he was responsible for a research program at Pioneer Hi-Bred International that focused on gene and regulatory network discovery, the design of DNA transformation vectors, and the development of methods to analyze the genetic properties of gene networks. As an associate professor in the Department of Genetics, Development & Cell Biology at Iowa State University, he collaborated with the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology program since 2003. From 2000-2001, Dr. Peccoud founded and oversaw the operations of e-NoteBooks, Inc. (Seattle, WA), a support company for the technical computing industry, which sold its assets to The MathWorks, Inc. (Natick, MA) and BetterVIEW Consulting (Vancouver, BC). From 1994-1999, Jean Peccoud held a series of research positions at the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM) in Grenoble, France, and in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle. |
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Colin Semple Colin Semple received his PhD in evolutionary genetics in 1994 from The University of Edinburgh. Since 2001 he has been Head of Bioinformatics at the MRC Human Genetics Unit, one of the largest MRC research establishments supporting approximately 200 scientists. Colin is a PI in the University of Edinburgh Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine, and a member of the editorial boards of the open access journals BMC Bioinformatics and BMC Research Notes. He runs a laboratory carrying out novel research in computational biology with applications in evolution and human disease, and has been accused of indulging in 'evolutionary systems biology'. |
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Jaroslav Stark Jaroslav's early research interests were in the general area of nonlinear dynamical systems, ranging from quite pure mathematical questions to practical applications in engineering, biology and medicine. In recent years he has particularly concentrated on the latter, and especially on the topic of biological signalling, both within and between cells. This is mainly applied to problems in immunology, cancer biology and reproductive biology, in close collaboration with experimental biologists at Imperial College. Over the last few years this has evolved into an interest in the emerging discipline of Systems Biology, and the analysis of complex dynamical data sets in cell and molecular biology.
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