BCIG SPEAKER EVENT: "Cyberinfrastructure for Biodefense:
Bioinformatics Resources & Networks for Development of Countermeasures"
- view the seminar archive
Clinical
Center (Building 10) Medical Board Room (Room 2C116)
DESCRIPTION: The integration of knowledge from various fields such as
computer science, mathematics, chemistry and biology has resulted in a vast
opportunity for creating new research environments based upon the concepts of
cyberinfrastructure (CI). In part, this has been accomplished by providing
effective and efficient platforms that empower scientists and engineers to
conduct transdisciplinary team research. The CI group at the Virginia
Bioinformatics Institute has established functional CI systems in the areas of
bioinformatics and computational biology, which focus on infectious diseases. CI
has been deployed under various research projects funded by the Department of
Defense (DOD), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID),
IBM and SUN Microsystems. Specifically, these projects include the Pathogen
Portal project (PathPort), the PathoSystems Resource Integration Center (PATRIC)
and the Proteomics Data Center (VBIPDC). The bioinformatics resources developed
by the CI group include tools for the curation of the genomes and pathosystems
of a wide range of infectious organisms, database systems for organizing the
high-throughput data generated from the study of pathosystems biology and
software systems for analysis and visualization of the data. The outreach
activities of the CI group are funded through the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center
of Excellence (MARCE) from NIAID and a CI demonstration project from National
Science Foundation (NSF). The outreach activities include the training of
current and future generations of scientists and collaborative research
activities with a primary goal of generating knowledge through analysis,
integration and ensuring the interoperability of diverse data sets. The progress
made in the development of biodefense resources such as curation data, databases
and software systems will be presented together with a description of some of
the forward-looking education and outreach initiatives of the CI group.
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3:00 - 4:30 pm April 20, 2006
Oswald Crasta, Ph.D.
Cyberinfrastructure Group, Virginia Bioinformatics
Institute, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State
University, Blacksburg, VA
Oswald R. Crasta is Director of Bioinformatics at the
Cyberinfrastructure Group (CIG) at the Virginia
Bioinformatics Institute. For the past two years, he
has been managing a team of bioinformaticians and
computational biologists as well as working closely
with software engineers to develop a bioinformatics
portal to facilitate research on pathogenic organisms
(PathoSystems Biology). The current CIG projects he is
working on are PathPort (http://pathport.vbi.vt.edu/),
PATRIC (https://patric.vbi.vt.edu/),
MARCE (http://marce.vbi.vt.edu/),
and the VBI Proteomics Data Center or VBIPDC (http://proteinbank.vbi.vt.edu/ProteinBank/),
all funded to Dr. Bruno Sobral. Dr. Crasta is also the
Principal Investigator on the National Science
Foundation (NSF)-funded Cyberinfrastructure Team
project, an outreach initiative to train the 21st
Century workforce in bioinformatics and
cyberinfrastructure. Dr. Crasta has six years of
industry experience in managing large-scale genomics
research projects and personnel and a total of twenty
years of research and/or teaching experience with
specialization in the areas of genomics, molecular
genetics, crop physiology and production. Dr. Crasta
is a molecular geneticist by academic training and has
a Ph.D. degree from Cornell University and post-Ph.D.
training from Texas Tech and Purdue Universities. His
career goal is to use an integrated and
transdisciplinary research approach to apply molecular
tools for the discovery and validation of targets for
biotechnological applications. He is an inventor of
more than 10 issued patents and co-author of over 20
scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals.
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