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Supercomputing Comes to Iowa State in a BIG Way! (1/30/06 kmw)
Thanks to the supercomputing group headed by BCB chair Srinivas Aluru (Electrical and Computer Engineering), ISU now can boast one of the top ten university supercomputers in the country. The project, funded in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation, provides a tremendous resource for Iowa State bioinformatics researchers. The supercomputing team also includes BCB faculty members Bob Jernigan (Baker Center director and BBMB), Pat Schnable (Center for Plant Genomics director and Agronomy) and Arun Somani (Electrical and Computer Engineering chair). Read all about it!

USDA Partners ISU in International Swine Genome Sequencing Project Award (1/19/06 kmw)
BCB faculty member Max Rothschild (Animal Science Department) is one of nine co-directors of a $10 million National Research Initiative grant project announced last week by the USDA. The project partners seven institutions in four countries, with additional support from private partners, to sequence the swine genome. Rothschild, who is the director of ISU's Center for Integrated Animal Genomics (CIAG), has served as the USDA national pig genome coordinator since 1993. News release

CELT Workshops for Graduate Students (1/12/06 kmw)
ISU's Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) has announced an array of graduate student seminars to be offered this spring, with the first seminar, Balancing Teaching and Your Graduate Career, scheduled for January 27. This seminar series is designed to help graduate students learn the personal and professional skills needed to be their best. Check it out!

BCB Faculty Tracking National Genome Research (1/12/06 kmw)
BCB faculty member James Reecy is heading up the ISU team of scientists coordinating the national project to manage animal genomic information. Also involved in the project are BCB faculty members Max Rothschild, Susan Lamont, and Chris Tuggle. All are members of the Animal Science Department and ISU's Center for Intergrated Animal Genomics (CIAG). Full story

Complex Systems Summer Schools offered by The Santa Fe Institute (1/9/06 kmw)
The Santa Fe Institute is offering Complex Systems Summer Schools June 4-30 in Santa Fe, and July 9-August 4 in Beijing, China. These programs are "an intensive four-week introduction to complex behavior in mathematical, physical, living, and social systems for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows."

No tuition is charged, and some support for housing and travel expenses is available. For complete information, visit the Santa Fe Institute website. Application deadline is January 27.

Short-Courses offered during BSBSI at ISU this Summer (1/9/06 ts)
Mark your calendar for June 4 through 17th, if you are interested in taking part in the short courses provided through the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Summer Institute (BSBSI) at ISU, June 4 - August 5, 2006. Space is limited for enrollment in these short courses. Watch this site for more information.
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The Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Summer Institute (BCBSI) at Iowa State University is supported jointly by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). The purpose of these programs is to provide students majoring in the biological sciences, computer sciences, engineering, mathematics, and physical sciences with interdisciplinary bioengineering or bioinformatics research and education experiences.

Congratualtions, Srinivas! (1/6/06 ts)
BCB Faculty, Srinivas Aluru, ECpE, has finished editing his book:  Handbook of Computational Molecular Biology published by Chapman & Hall/CRC (December 21, 2005).  The Amazon book description says it "offers a comprehensive, systematic treatment of computational biology, from the most basic concepts to advanced applications. Algorithmic in nature, the handbook highlights applications to molecular biology through every topic covered. In addition, many of the newer topics in the field are covered in depth, like microarrays, comparative genomics and external memory algorithms, and parallel methods. Written by experts in the field, it covers problems related to understanding genetic diseases, the design of drugs tailored to the individual, deciphering the genomes of specific organisms, and understanding the process of evolution."  The ISBN is: 1584884061.

What's New at Parks Library? (1/9/06 ts)
Check out the complete January newsletter from Andrea Dinkelman, our Science Librarian, here. A few items:

The Park Library will be hosting A Field Guide to GenBank and NCBI Molecular Biology Resources. This free workshop will be presented by two NCBI training specialists. The course is scheduled for March 28 - 29, 2006. Watch for more details in late January.

New Bioinformatics - Proteomics - DNA book offerings at the Library include:

Ontologies for bioinformatics / Kenneth Baclawski, Tianhua Niu.
Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, c2006.
QH324.2 .B33 2006

Bioinformatics and computational biology solutions using R and Bioconductor / editors, Robert Gentleman ... [et al.].
New York : Springer, c2005.
QH324.2 B548x 2005

Informatics in proteomics / edited by Sudhir Srivastava.
Boca Raton, FL : Taylor & Francis/CRC Press, 2005.
QP551 I46 2005

Analytical techniques in DNA sequencing / edited by Brian K. Nunnally.
Boca Raton, FL : Taylor & Francis, 2005.
QP625 N89 A53 2005

Theoretical and experimental DNA computation / Martyn Amos.
Berlin ; New York : Springer, c2005.
QP625 N89 A56 2005

January Birthdays (12/27/05; edited 1-4-07 kmw)
So now, let us celebrate the New Year and our January birthdays!

Mgavi Brathwaite, BCB and IGERT
Feng Cui, BCB
Amy Determan, MGET
Jing Ding, BCB
Tyra Dunn, BCB and IGERT
Patricia Lonosky, IGERT alumna
Feihong Wu, BCB
Liang Ye, BCB

Spring 2006 MGET Minigrants Announced (12/27/05 kmw)
Congratulations to MGET fellows Myron Peto, Jeffry Sander and Michael Terribilini on receiving funding for their MGET minigrant proposals. Each fellow has been awarded $1,000. Myron's funding will enable him to attend the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah, in February, and Michael's grant will help fund his participation in the Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing in Maui, Hawaii, this month. Jeff saw the MGET minigrant as an opportunity to pick up some "mentor-guided wetlab training" to further his zinc finger research project; training will cover plasmid modification and cell transfer, growing cell cultures, protein purification and Biacore T100.

MGET minigrants also are available to all MGET PhD fellows for Summer 2006. To apply, just complete the application and submit it by the March 15 deadline. Funds must be expended by August 15, 2006.

Options for International Students to work after Graduation...(12/21/05 ts)
If you are an international student who would like to work in the U.S. after graduation in a postdoctoral position, etc., etc., please investigate OPT which is described in this document created by the International Student and Scholar office at ISU. Obtaining OPT status takes several months, so be sure to apply for it several months before graduation.

The other option for International students to work in the U.S. after graduation is to change to H-1B "temporary worker" status.  However, one must have a job to do this and an employer willing to sponsor them for the H.

Bioethics symposium on the intersection of politics and science (12/22/05 ts)
The Bioethics Outreach Program will sponsor this event from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., at the Scheman Building on January 6. Co-sponsors are the ISU Bioethics Program, the Office of Biotechnology, the Miller Lecture Fund in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the Women's Studies Program at Iowa State University.

The morning program will focus on the ethics and politics surrounding the science of women's health in both domestic and international contexts. Susan Wood, who recently resigned her post as director of the Office of Women's Health at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), will address her concerns about political influences on decisions made by the FDA regarding women's health. Other morning topics include bioethics and women's rights in the context of globalization, and the influence of judicial decisions and public activism on public policies regarding breast cancer.

The afternoon's program will focus more generally on the ethics of political sway in science and science policy. A panel of Iowa State researchers will reflect on the influence of politics in their areas of study. This event is free and open to the public. A continental breakfast will be available at 8 a.m., and the program will begin at 8:30 a.m. Lunch will be provided, and the program will be followed by a reception. Please register by visiting www.bioethics.iastate.edu/retreat.html or by calling Katy Reeder, ISU Bioethics Program, at (515) 294-2566.

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