C-DAC: Events - Accelerating Biology

New advances in biology are being made at a rapidly increasing pace, largely due to new technologies and a large amount of automation. The advent of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technology has brought in a new dimension to understand the molecular basis of a living organism. The Next Generation Sequencing technology enables sequencing of hundreds of genomes at an extremely rapid rate and at a significantly lower cost. The availability of hundreds of genomes in a short time is expected to revolutionize area of life sciences. A number of new methods like de-novo sequencing, resequencing, transcriptomics etc. are emerging in the Next Generation Sequencing area. These technologies have a tremendous applications is various areas of Human Health, Agriculture, Livestock and Environment.

The pace of sequencing is leading to a data overload and therefore the ability to analyze is much beyond the existing computing capabilities. This tsunami of data has led to a sea change in the storage and computing requirements. In order to gear up to tackle these challenges most biologists are adopting the use of cyberinfrastructure. Cyberinfrastructure is a combination of data resources, high-speed networks and high performance computing resources that bring people, information and computational resources together to perform science in this information driven world.

The last few decades have witnessed the evolution of biology from what used to be a purely experimental field, to a high end computational domain, where unrelenting computational power is required to decipher pieces of data generated through high throughput techniques into blocks of information that will help to answer many mysteries of life. To be able to generate knowledge from the oceans of genomic data, enabling technologies like High Performance Computing, Grid Computing and Cloud Computing are the latest weapons in the hands of the modern biologist.

This symposium intends to bring together researchers in various domains of human health, agriculture, livestock and environment who are using advanced computational biology tools to solve scientific problems in their respective domains.

Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) with its genesis in the year 1988 as a national initiative of Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MC&IT), Government of India, embodies the spirit of indigenous high-end research and development for state -of -the-art technologies and solutions. As a scientific society, C-DAC has been continuously engaged for over two decades, towards the design, development and deployment of electronics and advanced Information Technology (IT) products and solutions for the benefit of the society. C-DAC's thrust in meeting the national agenda has manifest itself in the execution of several key projects, leading to the creation of a strong brand equity for its inherent expertise and capabilities, in the global context. Presently, this expertise extends to the field of High Performance Computing (HPC) fueling various scientific, engineering and business applications. Fostering an environment of innovation and dealing with cutting edge technologies, C-DAC's PARAM series of supercomputers, the latest being the 54 TF PARAM-YUVA, have been used to address these diverse applications at various national and international institutions. The implementation of the Garuda Grid has seen the optimal usage of HPC resources spread across the nation in a congregated manner accelerating scientific research. In-house developed hardware components in the form of Reconfigurable Computing System (RCS) cards specific for particular scientific applications have accelerated them many fold. Over the years the Bioinformatics Group of C-DAC has developed into an active centre of bioinformatics research, applying HPC to accelerate biological research towards the betterment of human life.

Activities of the Bioinformatics Group @ C-DAC are aimed towards acquiring in-depth knowledge and understanding the various strata of bio-complexity and hence include an entire spectrum of data analyses and essential research consumables. Various in-house research activities are being carried out, which include genome sequence assembly, microarray data analysis, structure-based drug discovery, protein folding and various molecular dynamics simulations using advanced MD techniques like REMD and CGMD.

The Bioinformatics Resources & Applications Facility (BRAF) at C-DAC, is an effort providing high-end supercomputing facility to the researchers working in the areas of Bioinformatics. It is funded by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India. The facility is equipped with a dedicated supercomputer named “PARAM BioChrome”. BRAF offers various genome analysis and molecular modelling codes in an effort towards providing high-end supercomputing facility to the researchers working in the area of bioinformatics.

The group leverages its core strengths and intellectual property from advanced research in the areas of Computational Biology and development of various cutting edge tools to enhance biological research, the latest being the development of “Anvaya”, a workflows environment for high-throughput genome analysis. Apart from this, the group has also made major contributions in High Performance Computing including Cloud Computing, and has developed an in-house repertoire of bioinformatics software for the pharmaceutical and research industry, like NGS-TK, iMolDock, GENOPIPE, TaxoGrid to name a few.

The group has active collaborations with a number of eminent research organizations and industries, national and international such as Roslin Institute (UK), University of Surrey (UK), Oregon Health and Science University (USA), NIH (USA), Bard College (USA), University of Illinois (USA), National Centre for Cell Science (Pune), University of Pune (Pune), IIT Madras (Chennai), Tata Memorial Hospital (Mumbai), National Chemical Laboratory (USA), Ventri Biologicals (Pune), IBB (Pune), ACTREC (Mumbai).

Accelerating Biology 2013 : The Next Wave is a three day symposium on current trends in Bioinformatics. The sessions will comprise of invited talks from eminent academicians from esteemed institutes. The talks will address the challenges in the areas of Structure and Dynamics of Biomolecules, Computational Genomics: Application in Human Health, Computational Genomics : Application in Plants / Animals / Microbes, Algorithms / System Biology and BRAF users : Case Studies. The symposium is targeted at students and researchers from academic institutes, universities and Bioinformatics industries.

Click here for Technical Programme

Dr.Venugopal Nair, Institute of Animal Health, UK
Dr.Kalyan Gayen, National Institute of Technology Agartala
Dr.Leelavati Narlikar, National Chemical Laboratory (NCL), Pune
Dr.Pramod Wangikar, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay
Dr.Saumyadipta Pyne, CRRao Advanced Institute of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, Hyderabad
Dr.Vinod Scaria, Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, New Delhi
Dr.Aditya Mittal, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi
Prof.R.Sankara Ramakrishnan, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur
Prof.Dhananjay Bhattacharya, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata
Dr.Pradeep Kumar P I, Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai
Dr.Mukund Thattai, National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore
Dr.Sharmila Bapat, National Centre for Cell Science, Pune
Dr.Mukesh Doble, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras
Dr.Chetan Gadgil, National Chemical Laboratory, Pune
Dr.T.R.Sharma, National Research Centre for Plant Biotechnology, New Delhi
Dr.N.Yathindra, Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology, Bangalore
Dr.Jan Kim, Institute of Animal Health, UK
Dr.H.A.Nagarajaram, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting & Diagnostics (CDFD), Hyderabad
Dr.Alpan Raval, D.E.Shaw Research, Hyderabad

Day: Wednesday Feb 20
Time: 6:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. Pune time
Title: "Making Biomedical Data Exchange Fast, Facile and Fruitful: Speedway to a New Era in Research and Clinical Care"

Co-Moderators: Marcia A. Kean, Chairman, Feinstein Kean Healthcare (in person); and Anil Srivastava, Ph.D., Director, Open Health Systems Laboratory (in person)

All registered participants are encouraged to make a poster presentation of their recent research activities and submit an abstract, not exceeding 250 words. The confirmation of poster selection will be notified by 5^th February 2013.

Poster size should be 2ft X 3ft. Material to be required for mounting the poster will be provided by organizers.

The posters would be evaluated and the best few will be allowed for oral presentation in the “Young Speaker Program”.

The prizes will be given to the best 3 posters.

The registration fee includes symposium kit, breakfast, tea/coffee during breaks, lunches and dinners during symposium days.

Limited Accommodation will be available on a first-come-first-serve basis.
The registration fees does not include accomodation charges. The participants have to pay directly to the guest house.

Cilck here for detail list of accommodation

Kindly print the form after the completion of the application process and send it with the demand draft. Kindly make your demand draft in favour of “Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC)” payable at Pune. Mail the registration form with the requisite fee to the following address:

Convenor: Dr. Rajendra Joshi
Kind Attn.: Ms. Sayali Gongle
Bioinformatics Group,
Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC),
Pune University Campus, Ganeshkhind,
Pune – 411 007

Yashawantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration (YASHADA)
Rajbhavan Complex,
Baner Road,
Pune – 411 007
Tel. : +91-20-25608000
Fax : +91-20-2560810

Ms.Sayali Gongle
Bioinformatics Group,
Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC),
Pune University Campus, Ganesh Khind,
Pune - 411 007, India.
Telephone/Fax: +91-20-25694084/25704196
Email: bio@cdac.in
Web: http://bioinfo-portal.cdac.in

Note: Registrations once confirmed are non-transferable & non-refundable (including accommodation charges)

Accelerating Biology 2013:The Next Wave (20-22 February, 2013)

Accelerating Biology 2013:The Next Wave
(20-22 February, 2013)