KCALSI partnered with UMKC and Dr. Mark Hoffman to host the First Annual Bioinformatics Conference on October 15-16, 2015.
The two-day symposium was the culmination of a key recommendation made in a bioinformatics assessment funded by the Kauffman Foundation. The event attracted more than 170 students and professionals hailing from both academia and industry. In lieu of a printed program, a Guidebook application was built to communicate information to attendees such as the conference agenda, speaker biographies and abstracts, and attendee contact information.
The conference featured a total of 33 speakers, including keynotes Dr. Jessica Tenenbaum, PhD, who serves as Associate Director of Bioinformatics at the Duke Translational Medicine Institute, and Dr. Christopher A. Longhurst, MD, the Chief Medical Information Officer at Stanford Children’s Health. Dr. Tenenbaum opened Day One of the conference with a presentation on translational bioinformatics’ ability to enable Precision Medicine. Her presentation focused on the remarkable achievements brought about by translational bioinformatics as well as the challenges faced by the rapidly advancing field. Dr. Longhurst began Day Two with a talk on the often overhyped concept of “Big Data.” He shared real-world examples of the benefits of bringing complex data sets to the bedside in both clinical research at Stanford and in commercial startups in the Silicon Valley.
The remaining speakers presented their expertise in seven different discussion panels. Each of the panels consisted of four short speaker presentations followed by a discussion of the topics presented. Panel themes ranged from Data Structure to Image Analysis, ensuring that the conference covered a wide breadth of relevant bioinformatics focuses.
While the speaker-discussion panels allowed participants to learn from bioinformatics experts, the conference’s poster session offered them the opportunity to present their own research findings. 25 posters highlighted the work of the Kansas City area’s bioinformatics researchers. While this portion of the event spanned only two hours in duration, it was key in allowing both professional and student researchers to share results, techniques, and ideas with one another.
Not only did the conference give researchers the chance to collaborate. It also gave bioinformatics students the ability to interact with potential employers in a unique mock interview session. Eleven university students were interviewed by Cerner Corporation, Children’s Mercy Hospital, and BioMed Valley Discoveries. These local employers helped provide students with the knowledge and interview experience needed to obtain employment within the bioinformatics field.