Wednesday, 24 July 2019

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Thursday, 25 July 2019

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Rita Colwell, PhD

Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland College Park and
Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health
President and Chairman, CosmosID, Inc.
Senior Advisor and Chairman Emeritus, Canon U. S. Life Sciences
TBP – Keynote

About the speaker: Dr. Rita Colwell’s interests are focused on global infectious diseases, water, and health and Dr. Colwell developed an international network to address emerging infectious diseases and water issues, including safe drinking water for both the developed and developing world, in collaboration with Safe Water Network, headquartered in New York City.
Dr. Colwell served as the 11 th Director of the National Science Foundation, 1998-2004. In her capacity as NSF Director, she served as Co-chair of the Committee on Science of the National Science and Technology Council. One of her major interests includes K-12 science and mathematics education, graduate science and engineering education, and increased participation of women and minorities in science and engineering.
Dr. Colwell served as President of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute and Professor of Microbiology and Biotechnology at the University Maryland. She was also a member of the National Science Board from 1984 to 1990.
Dr. Colwell has been awarded 63 honorary degrees from institutions of higher education, including her Alma Mater, Purdue University and is the recipient of the 2005 Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star, bestowed by the Emperor of Japan, the 2006 National Medal of Science awarded by the President of the United States, the 2010 Stockholm Water Prize awarded by the King of Sweden, the 2017 Vannevar Bush Award from the National Science Foundation, the 2017 International Prize for Biology from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and the 2018 Lee Kuan Yew Water Prize of Singapore. Dr. Colwell is an honorary member of the microbiological societies of the UK, Australia, France, India, Israel, Bangladesh, and the U.S. and has held several honorary professorships, including the University of Queensland, Australia. A geological site in Antarctica, Colwell Massif, has been named in recognition of her work in the Polar Regions.
Dr. Colwell has held many advisory positions in the U.S. Government, nonprofit science policy organizations, and private foundations, as well as in the international scientific research community. She is a nationally-respected scientist and educator, and has authored or co-authored 19 books and more than 800 scientific publications. She produced the award-winning film, Invisible Seas, and has served on editorial boards of numerous scientific journals.
Dr. Colwell has previously served as Chairman of the Board of Governors of the American Academy of Microbiology and also as President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Washington Academy of Sciences, the American Society for Microbiology, the Sigma Xi National Science Honorary Society, the International Union of Microbiological Societies, and the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS). Dr. Colwell is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, the Royal Society of Canada, the Royal Irish Academy, the Bangladesh Academy of Science, the Indian Academy of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.
Born in Beverly, Massachusetts, Dr. Colwell holds a B.S. in Bacteriology and an M.S. in Genetics, from Purdue University, and a Ph.D. in Oceanography from the University of Washington.

Gunnar Rätsch, PhD

Head of Biomedical Informatics at ETH Zurich, Switzerland
TBP – Keynote

About the speaker: Gunnar Rätsch leads the Biomedical Informatics group at the Institute of Machine Learning at ETH Zurich since May 2016. Before, he was an Associate Professor at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, where he will continue to hold adjunct positions for the coming years.
Gunnar Rätsch studied computer science and physics and obtained his Ph.D. degree in Machine Learning in 2001 at the National Institute for Data Analysis in Berlin. As a postdoctoral fellow he was at the Research School of Information Sciences and Engineering of the Australian National University in Canberra (Australia) and at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen (Germany). Between 2005 and 2011 he also led a research group at the Friedrich Miescher Laboratory of the Max Planck Society in Tübingen (Germany).
His group’s research at ETH lies at the interface between methods research in machine learning & sequence analysis and relevant application areas in biology & medicine. In interdisciplinary collaborations, his group has significantly contributed to the understanding of several RNA- dependent processes including RNA splicing and translation.
Current research focuses include large-scale Machine Learning, accurate transcriptome reconstruction, identification of RNA-processing regulators, developing clinical decision support systems (analysis of electronic health records (EHR)) and developing methods and resources for international data sharing of genomic and clinical data. He is leading multiple international working groups, including the RNA analysis group of the International Cancer Genome Consortium. He is an active contributor to the Global Alliance of Genomics and Health (GA4GH), an international organization that promotes and technically supports data sharing across institutional and country boundaries. He leads the data group of the BRCA Challenge project, a driver project of GA4GH.