On 7 October the Utrecht Bioinformatics Center symposium took place for the sixth time. The program reflected the breadth of bioinformatics within life sciences, and showed diversity of research carried out in the different computational groups at Utrecht Science Park.
Keynotes and Principal Investigators
Our keynotes prof.dr.ir Thijs Ettema and dr Sara Pulit presented their innovative work. Thijs talked about his groundbreaking work on the asgard archaea and where they fit into the tree of life. Sara enlightened us on how she’s using genetics to aid drug discovery in a pharmaceutical setting.
In addition, two of our local principal investigators, Anita Schürch and Vlad Cojocaru, showcased their research. Anita explained her work on the interaction of different organisms with the microbiome of hospitalized patients. Vlad zoomed in on his work on modeling the structure of protein-DNA interactions.
[vc_row]
[vc_column width=’1/4′]
[/vc_column]
[vc_column width=’1/4′]
[/vc_column]
[vc_column width=’1/4′]
[/vc_column]
[vc_column width=’1/4′]
[/vc_column]
[/vc_row]
Young community
Four junior scientists represented the young bioinformatics community in Utrecht by giving a presentation based on their abstracts submitted. Roy Straver, Laura Dijkhuizen, Niels Aerts and Rurika Oka were selected and separately took the stage.
[vc_row][vc_column width=’1/4′]
[/vc_column][vc_column width=’1/4′]
[/vc_column][vc_column width=’1/4′]
[/vc_column][vc_column width=’1/4′]
[/vc_column][/vc_row]
Best poster prices
Special appreciation was there for Joanna Wolthuis for her poster on MetaBoShiny (3rd), Luan Nguyen for his poster on recombination deficiency (2nd) and Josephine Daub for her poster on genetic interactions in pediatric cancer (1st). Congratulations to all for this achievement.
[vc_row][vc_column width=’1/3′]
[/vc_column][vc_column width=’1/3′]
[/vc_column][vc_column width=’1/3′]
[/vc_column][/vc_row]
With close to 200 participants, over 30 posters and ample opportunity to interact, it was an inspiring symposium with lots of opportunities to share ideas with fellow computational biologists.
As part of the 50 year bioinformatics activities the next UBC symposium will last two days.
Save the date: 5 and 6 October 2020!