Stanford Hosts National Bioinformatics Conference Aug. 14-18

STANFORD, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Aug. 7, 2006–Want to know how scientists are using the power of computers to devise new ways of diagnosing and treating disease? You can ask the nation’s top experts during an Aug. 15 panel discussion at Stanford University.

The panel is part of the fifth annual Computational Systems Bioinformatics Conference, which takes place Aug. 14-18. Participants will address computational issues in biological pathways, biomolecular engineering and medical imaging.

“Five or six years ago, biomedical computation was identified as an under-funded field,” said Mark Musen, MD, PhD, professor of medicine (medical informatics) and head of Stanford Medical Informatics. “More quantitative techniques were needed to fill the gaps in data analysis and management.”

The National Institutes of Health provided support for seven centers in biomedical computation in order to convert basic medical research results into practical applications more quickly. Two of these centers were created at Stanford: the National Center for Biomedical Ontology, which Musen leads, and the National Center for Physics-based Simulation of Biological Structures, led by Prof. Russ Altman, MD, PhD.

Musen will deliver a keynote address at the conference about his work on ontologies — computer-friendly ways of structuring knowledge — in biological research. The conference also feature talks on engineering genetic machines and studying the ocean’s microbes.

In addition, Musen, Altman and the five other leaders of the NIH biomedical computation centers will participate in a panel discussion, which is free and open to the public.

“The panel format gives people a chance to ask questions of the leading representatives for the field of biomedical computation,” said Betty Cheng, associate director of distance education in the biomedical informatics training program and tutorial chair of the conference.

The panel will be held at 7:45 p.m. on Aug. 15 in Memorial Auditorium. For more information and to register for the conference, please visit http://www.lifesciencessociety.org/CSB2006/index2006.html.

The conference was founded by Bay Area Bioinformatics and is sponsored by the Life Sciences Society.

Stanford University Medical Center integrates research, medical education and patient care at its three institutions — Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford. For more information, please visit the Web site of the medical center’s Office of Communication & Public Affairs at http://mednews.stanford.edu.