Final Agenda: 

Track 1 explores high performance computing technologies and techniques (traditional and accelerated technologies), architecture to handle data in a concise fashion, transferring data across networks (storage, management, safety, visualization), and open source support.

TUESDAY, APRIL 12

7:00 am Workshop Registration and Morning Coffee

8:00 - 4:00 pm Pre-Conference Workshops*

*Separate Registration Required

2:00 - 6:00 Main Conference Registration

4:00 Event Chairperson’s Opening Remarks

Cindy Crowninshield, RD, LDN, Conference Director, Cambridge Healthtech Institute

Sponsored by
4:05 Keynote Introduction
Chris Blessington, Life Sciences Solutions Architect, Isilon

Plenary Keynote
4:15 Making the World’s Knowledge Computable

Stephen Wolfram, Ph.D., CEO, Wolfram Research; Creator of Wolfram|Alpha

Sponsored by
5:00 Welcome Reception in the Exhibit Hall and Poster Viewing

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13

7:00 am Registration and Morning Coffee

8:00 Event Chairperson’s Opening Remarks

Phillips Kuhl, Co-Founder and President, Cambridge Healthtech Institute

Sponsored by
 8:05 Keynote Introduction
Grant Stephen, CEO, Tessella, Inc.

Plenary Keynote
8:15 Interacting with Complex Information Landscapes: Integration and Next Generation User Interfaces

Bryn Roberts, Ph.D., Global Head, Informatics, Pharma Research and Early Development, R. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd.

8:45 Benjamin Franklin Award/Presentation: Jonathan Eisen, Ph.D., Professor, Genome Center, University of California, Davis

9:10 Best Practices Awards Program

Sponsored by


9:45 Coffee Break in the Exhibit Hall and Poster Viewing

IT Infrastructure Trends and Projections

Sponsored by
 10:50 Chairperson’s Remarks
Barbara Murphy, CMO, Panasas, Inc.

11:00 Featured Presentation
HPC Trends from the Trenches (Joint with Tracks 1 - 3)

Chris Dagdigian, Founding Partner and Director of Technology, BioTeam, Inc.

This talk will review some of the BioTeam’s recent work with biotech, pharmaceutical, government and enterprise clients. As an independent consulting firm, the BioTeam is able to see how HPC problems in life science informatics have been approached by organizations of varying type and size. We will address common problems and observed trends in computing, workflows and data movement, along with details on particularly clever solutions observed in production environments around the world.

11:30 Strategic Planning for IT Infrastructure in Support of Data-Intensive Science

Gregg TeHennepe, Senior Manager, Research Liaison, Information Technology, The Jackson Laboratory

In 2010, Jackson produced a whitepaper surveying the IT infrastructure needed to support the biological and genetic research projected over the next five years. This talk will review those projections, survey the key issues facing the institution, and cover the actions and efforts that have been undertaken to meet these needs.

Sponsored by
12:00 pm Redefining Storage in the Era of Big Data: An End-User Roundtable Discussion

Stuart Glenn, Software Engineer, Oklahoma Medical Research Center

Yate-Ching Yuan, Director, Biomedical Informatics, City of Hope

James Lowey, IT Manager, Translational Genomics Research Institute

With the onset of the latest generation of DNA sequencing technologies, scientists and IT pros are challenged with how to best store and manage this tsunami of data, with few answers from traditional storage systems. Bioinformaticists, researchers, scientists and IT staff will discuss these changes and how they impede the next generation of discovery. Through real-world experience and first-hand perspectives, end-users will share the strategies and technologies they’ve deployed to overcome these challenges and drive new breakthroughs in scientific understanding.

Sponsored by
12:30 Luncheon Presentation
Solving Data Management Challenges in Genome Sequencing Research

Peter Brey, Worldwide Business Development Manager, HP Storage

Research organizations are faced with rapidly exploding amounts of data. Analyzing, storing, and managing this data is becoming particularly challenging. Learn how HP’s Converaged Infrastructure Strategy can provide an innovate solution for data management.

1:40 Chairperson’s Remarks
Barbara Murphy, CMO, Panasas, Inc.

1:45 Comprehensive Picture of Biopharma IT & Knowledge Management

John Keilty, Vice President, Informatics, Infinity Pharmaceuticals

Data Centers: Technologies,
Applications and Redesign

2:15 Data Warehousing to Enable Superior Decision Support across the R&D Process

Eric Perakslis, Ph.D., Vice President, Research & Development IT, Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceuticals Research and Development

Sponsored by
2:45 Fast Access to Terascale Data – Large Memory x86 Servers Speed Bioscience Research

Jill Matzke, Ph.D., Director, Server Marketing, SGI

In the dynamic world of bioscience, one constant is data explosion. New servers with terabytes of memory drive huge performance gains in computational chemistry, genomics and system biology. This means not only great ROI, but entirely new modes of discovery.

3:15 Refreshment Break in the Exhibit Hall and Poster Viewing

3:45 Biogen Idec’s Data Center Redesign

Mike Russo, Information Technology Director, Global Infrastructure and Operations, Biogen Idec

4:15 Unifying Networking Technologies in Data Centers

Vijay Samalam, Senior Director, IT and Scientific Computing, Janelia Farm Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

This presentation will detail some of our attempts to use 10G Ethernet as a single unifying networking technology in our data center. We will describe our experiences installing and running one of the largest 10G Ethernet networked high performance computing commodity cluster in our data center. Co-collaborators of this work include Goran Ceric, Manager, Scientific Computing Systems and Spartaco Cicerchia, Manager, Networking.

Sponsored by
4:45 Adding Intelligence to Existing NAS and File Systems:  Metadata, Backups, and Data Life Cycle Management

Jacob Farmer, CTO, Cambridge Computer

5:15 Best of Show Awards in the Exhibit Hall

6:15 Exhibit Hall Closes

THURSDAY, APRIL 14

8:45 Event Chairperson’s Opening Remarks

Kevin Davies, Ph.D., Editor-in-Chief, Bio-IT World

10:30 Coffee Break in the Exhibit Hall with Poster Competition

Investment in Virtualized and
Network Storage Infrastructure: End-user Perspectives

10:55 Chairperson’s Remarks

11:00 End-User Value of Virtualized and Network Storage Infrastructure Investment

Jeff Pennington, Director, Translational Informatics, Center for Biomedical Informatics, The Children’s Hospital Of Philadelphia Research Institute

This presentation will explore the key role that virtualization and flexible, multifaceted storage infrastructure plays in an academic R&D environment. The perspective of this talk arises from the hospital’s NIH-funded projects. Multiple case studies will highlight the payoff in grant competitiveness, speed of innovation, support for large-scale studies, data sharing, collaboration, and FISMA compliance an institution realizes from investment in advanced computing infrastructure.

11:30 Proposed Virtual BioRepository Platform for Distributed Research Networks: Case Study in ALS

Alexander Sherman, Director, Strategic Development and Systems, Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital

Sponsored by
12:00 pm Scaling File Storage To Keep Up With Science
Bjorn Andersson, Director, Product Marketing, Blue Arc Corporation
New and more affordable instruments are driving an ever increasing flow of data to be analyzed and managed. Meanwhile, advances in science and the increasing use of application mash-ups create more mixed and unpredictable workloads for shared storage solutions. It's essential to be able to scale to independently meet performance and capacity demands as well as optimize operations. pNFS is the new industry standard that addresses these scalability requirements.

12:30 Luncheon in the Exhibit Hall and Poster Viewing

2:00 Exhibit Hall Closes

1:55 Chairperson’s Remarks

2:00 Requirements for a Successful Electronic Lab Notebook Deployment: Eli Lilly and Company Case Study

Michael E. Kopach, Ph.D., Research Advisor, Eli Lilly and Co.

Since 2003 Eli Lilly and Company has steadily broadened its adoption of Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) across multiple business unit and geographic areas including at select contract manufacturing organizations. While positive efficiency gains are achieved by deployment of an ELN, the transition from the main-stay paper laboratory notebook involves challenges on many levels for an organization including data management and network storage. This presentation will discuss deployment of a “fully electronic” ELN at Eli Lilly and Company and present lessons learned after seven years of operation.

2:30 Applying Lean Information Flow Principles to Biological Informatics within R&D

Gemma Satterthwaite, Ph.D, EMBA, Global Lead, Biological Informatics, Astrazeneca Patrik Holmqvist, MSc, Computer Science & Engineering, Head of Information Management & Continuous Improvement, AstraZeneca

With the current R&D productivity challenges faced by Pharmaceutical companies, improving the quality and speed of decision making is a key driver. This presentation will describe AstraZeneca’s response to this challenge, focusing on the biological informatics. We will describe: 1) how we bring Lean Information Management to life within a scientific environment bridging the gap between science and IT; 2) the application of novel lean information flow principles across R&D and will focus on case studies within the biological informatics domain within R&D; 3) how optimizing information flow within R&D can enable improved decision making, identify common wastes and described how the effective application of biological informatics can transform product development; 4) best practice of real-time visualizations and key workflow used by scientists at AstraZeneca and how this information can be used to identify improvements; and 5) how Discovery Information Assets Landscape (DIAL) has been an invaluable part of developing our Biological Information Strategy and roadmaps on behalf of the Global Biology Network, AstraZeneca.

3:00 Title to be Announced
Speaker to be Announced

3:30 The Atlas Cloud Computing Infrastructure for Organizing and Querying Multiomics Data (Joint with Tracks 1-5)

Misha Kapushesky, Ph.D., Functional Genomics Team Leader, EBI, Cambridge UK

The Expression Atlas is a cloud computing based distributed infrastructure for organizing and querying multiomics data. Built upon the open-source Expression Atlas project at the EBI in partnership with the pharmaceutical industry, the Atlas provides a scalable solution that can be easily deployed on in-house servers or accessed remotely in the cloud. Learn how the Atlas deals with secure processing and combined analysis and integration of public/private transcriptomic and proteomic data, with an emphasis on our novel pipeline for next-generation sequencing data processing and reporting.

4:00 Conference Adjourns