University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center

The Second Annual OKBIOS Symposium was held on Friday October 28th, 2005 at Cox Convention Center in Oklahoma City.

The conference program is now available online for viewing and download (Program Brochure - pdf file)

This year’s symposium was hosted by the OU Health Sciences Center and has expanded the scope of the symposium toward biomedical and clinical research. As we move further into the Information Age, bioinformatics has become an invaluable means of helping researchers manage the enormous amount of data generated in biomedical research. OKBIOS 2005 highlighted the role of bioinformatics as a means of advancing our understanding both in the basic life sciences and in clinical research. The aim of this symposium was to bring together researchers, commercial developers, educators and students from around the state to share their work, research and experiences in bioinformatics, computational and systems biology, biomedical data integration, clinical informatics and biomedical imaging.

The second bioinformatics symposium OKBIOS 2005 was quite a success. Feedback so far has been very positive. About 140 people pre-registered for the conference and 30 more registered on site. Overall, there were approximately 100 attendees from all major Oklahoma universities, companies, government agencies and regional colleges We had a very interesting group of invited speakers (9 speakers) who presented on a diverse range of topics, encompassing academic, government and commercial efforts in bioinformatics.

Sponsors included Oklahoma Idea Network program, OUHSC Surgery Department and Oklahoma State Chamber who sponsored the student poster awards. In total, we had 16 posters submitted.

The winners of the OKBIOS 2005 student poster competition are:

1st place:

Mary Amonsen

Title: Identification of Target Proteins for Cancer Research: A Bioinformatics Approach

Affiliation: Oklahoma Baptist University

2nd place:

Jan Comer

Title: Evolution of the SPiroplasma P58 Multigene Family

Affiliation: Oklahoma State University

3rd place:

Isaac Harley

Title: Operon Verification from Microarray Expression Data in Prokaryotes

Affiliation: Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation

The First Annual OKBIOS Symposium was held on Friday November 12th, 2004 at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma at the brand new Stephenson Research and Technology Center.

The conference program is now available online for viewing and download (Program Brochure - pdf file)

The first bioinfomatics symposium for OKBIOS (OKBIOS 2004) was quite a success. Feedback so far has been very positive. About 220 people pre-registered for the conference and 30 more registered on site. Overall, there were approximately 160 attendees from all major Oklahoma universities, companies, government agencies, regional colleges and even a few from high schools. We had a very interesting group of invited speakers (9 speakers, including one who spoke through an interactive Internet videoconference) who presented on a diverse range of topics, encompassing academic, goverment and commercial efforts in bioinformatics.

Vendors included ISC Bioexpress, who provided a door prize for filling out evaluations and Silicon Genetics, who sponsores the student poster awards. In total, we had 16 posters submitted.

The winners of the OKBIOS 2004 student poster competition are:

1. First place: Rhonda M. Clark

Title: Locus-specific expansion of GAA triplet-repeats in the human genome

Authors: Rhonda M. Clark, Gillian L. Dalgliesh, Dan Endres and Sanjay I. Bidichandani

Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Oklahoma University Health Sciences Center. Oklahoma City

2. Second place: Elvin Varughesekutty

Title: Systems Bioinformatics Analysis of Molecular Interaction Networks for Common Cancers

Authors: Elvin Varughesekutty, Son Do, Dan Brackett, Yuriy Gusev

Affiliation: Department of Surgery, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center,Oklahoma City

3. Third place: Nicolas Knowlton

Title: Use of an internal standard to establish a baseline number of replicates in microarray experiments

Authors: Nicholas Knowlton

Affiliation: Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation and OU Health Sciences Center

We are very encouraged by the level of interest in Bioinformatics in Oklahoma and it provides us with the hope for the bright future of bioinformatics in our state.