Keynote Presentations

Lincoln Stein, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research
Topic: TBA

Carl Zimmer
"The Inner Jungle: The Natural History of the Human Microbiome"

Russ Altman, Stanford University
"Translational Bioinformatics: A Year in Review"

Peter Embi, The Ohio State University

Bridge Day Speaker

Kenneth H. Buetow, Director, NCI Center for Bioinformatics and Information Technology, Laboratory Chief, Laboratory of Population Genetics, National Cancer Institute

Dr. Ken Buetow's scientific career has focused for more than 20 years on understanding the role of genetics in complex human diseases such as cancer, and the application of sophisticated informatics technologies to solve major biomedical challenges. In his current role as National Cancer Institute Associate Director, responsible for Bioinformatics and Information Technology, he oversees the caBIG® (cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid®) program, a groundbreaking initiative to speed developments in cancer research by facilitating interoperability in order to create a "World Wide Web" of biomedical research to connect the entire cancer community. caBIG® offers a revolutionary interoperable infrastructure, unifying standards, and a variety of services to enable organizations and individual researchers to securely share biomedical data, and its capabilities serve as a demonstration of the connectivity required for Personalized Medicine.

Dr. Buetow also serves as the Director of the NCI Center for Bioinformatics and Information Technology (NCI CBIIT), which is responsible for interoperability and integration of NCI research. He is also the Chief of the Laboratory of Population Genetics (LPG), where his group applies genomics to increase our understanding of the genetics of complex phenotypes. In addition to serving on the governing and advisory boards for numerous government organizations, academic institutions, and scientific and medical societies, Dr. Buetow has published more than 160 scientific papers. Most recently, Dr. Buetow has been elected as a Fellow by the American College of Medical Informatics, a distinguished honor given to those who have demonstrated major contributions in biomedical Informatics. Additional honors and awards include The Editor's Choice Award from Bio-IT World (2008), The Federal 100 Award (2005), The NIH Award of Merit (2004) and the NCI Director's Gold Star Award (2004). Dr. Buetow received a B.A. in biology from Indiana University in 1980 and a Ph.D. in human genetics from the University of Pittsburgh in 1985.