Norwich, United Kingdom
July 26, 2013
This week’s ISMB/ECCB conference provided The Genome Analysis Centre (TGAC) with an opportunity to share its work, and to network with the largest gathering of bioinformaticians in the world. TGAC highlights included the co-organisation of a very successful education workshop, a prize-winning poster, and the addition of TGAC staff member, Dr Manuel Corpas, to the ISCB (International Society for Computational Biology) Board of Directors.
Held 19-23 July in Berlin, ISMB/ECCB joined together the annual conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) and the European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB) to make the world's largest bioinformatics and computational biology conference. Over five days, 225 talks spanning 13 different topic areas were scheduled, as well as 800 posters. Over 1,500 attendees were expected.
It was a great opportunity for TGAC to present its experts and projects, and to mingle with the bioinformatics community. The TGAC stand proved popular, with the relaxed atmosphere encouraging people to sit on the sofas and chat with each about their work. T-shirts and mouse pads were also handed out to those who provided information about their training needs and signed up to receive more information about courses offered by TGAC.
TGAC is proud of the accomplishments of Dr Manuel Corpas, Plant and Animal Genomes Project Leader, and Sergey Lamzin, one of its PhD candidates, at ISMB/ECCB. Manuel was elected to the ISCB Board of Directors, and Sergey was presented with the F1000 Poster Award for his outstanding poster presentation, “Sequence assembly and variation calling using multiple-dimension de Bruijn graphs.”
While attending the conference, Dr Manuel Corpas delivered a highlight talk on, “BioJS: A JavaScript Library for Representation of Biological Data,” to a packed room of more than 300 people. He also co-organised a very successful workshop, “Establishing Successful Networks in Bioinformatics,” and the Junior Principle Investigator Initiative meeting.
Another highlight of ISMB/ECCB was a very successful workshop co-organised by TGAC’s Dr Vicky Schneider-Gricar, Head of Training and Outreach, entitled, “Workshop on Education in Bioinformatics.” It explored ways in which to bring bioinformatics training to the attention of an increasingly diverse audience who are exposed to bioinformatics and seek a greater understanding of it, especially those who are medically trained.
A large spectrum of people, from senior scientists to students attended the conference and it was an opportunity for our early-career scientists to immerse themselves and learn from the more experienced attendees.
Anil Thanki, Scientific Programmer - Core Bioinformatics, said, “This was my first ISMB/EECB conference and it was a great experience. I met many people including some I knew from Twitter and got to meet face-to-face for the first time. By talking to people and attending many interesting talks, I got to know more about new techniques and trends, and where TGAC stands amongst them. I also presented a poster on the “TGAC Browser” which generated lots of interest and attention.”
Related links
ISMB/ECCB conference website: http://www.iscb.org/ismbeccb2013
Follow TGAC on Twitter for our latest news and event information: https://twitter.com/GenomeAnalysis
List of posters presented by TGAC at ISMB/EECB
Authors from TGAC unless otherwise stated
Sequence assembly and variation calling using multiple-dimension de Bruijn graphs
Sergey Lamzin.
TGAC Browser: visualisation solutions for big data in the genomic era
Anil Thanki; Xingdong Bian; Dr Robert Davey.
Knowledge Exchange starts early: a year in industry scheme
Rubina Kalra; Dr Vicky Schneider-Gricar.
Bioinformatics training & education: towards global sustainable solutions
Dr Vicky Schneider-Gricar; Assoc Prof. Nicola Mulder (Computational Biology Group, Institute for Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine, University of Cape Town, Clinical Laboratory Sciences South Africa); Dr David Lovell (CSIRO, Mathematics, Informatics and Statistics Australia) et al.
A Training programme focuses on “Big Data”: From infrastructure needs to concepts and skills to handle, retrieve and analyse the data.
Dr Vicky Schneider-Gricar; Allegra Via (University of Rome, La Sapienza, Biocomputing Italy); Dr Rob Davey; Bernardo Clavijo.
Identifying and classifying trait linked SNPs in non-reference species by walking coloured De Bruijn graphs
Dan MacLean, (The Sainsbury Laboratory, United Kingdom); Dr Richard Leggett; Ricardo Ramirez-Gonzalez; Cintia Kawashima (The Sainsbury Laboratory, United Kingdom); Dr Walter Verweij (The Sainsbury Laboratory); Jonathan Jones (The Sainsbury Laboratory); Dr Mario Caccamo.
StatsDB: platform-agnostic storage and understanding of next generation sequencing run metrics
Dr Richard Leggett; Ricardo Ramirez-Gonzalez; Anil Thanki; Nizar Drou; Dr Rob Davey.
Phi29 and S1 nuclease treatment enhances multiple strand amplification DNA genome assembly
Purnima Pachori, Dr Tim Mauchline (Rothamsted Research, Argoecology, United Kingdom); Nizar Drou; Dr Penny Hirsch (Rothamsted Research, Argoecology, United Kingdom); Ian Clark (Rothamsted Research, Argoecology, United Kingdom).
A comparison of whole-genome sequencing approaches in polyploid wheat
Dr Jonathan Wright; Bernardo Clavijo; Dr Sarah Ayling.
Finding a needle in a “Hexaploid Haystack”
Ricardo Ramirez-Gonzalez; Dr Mario Caccamo; Dr Cristobal Uauy (John Innes Centre, Crop Genetics United Kingdom).
To read the poster summaries please visit the ISMB/ECCB website.
Topics
Species
