Invited speakers to talk about something that they are passionate about.

Sunday, January 5, 2020 at 8:40-9:40am

Steven Brenner, University of California, Berkeley
Steven E. Brenner is a Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and also holds appointments at the University of California, San Francisco and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Brenner’s undergraduate research was in the first genome laboratory, mentored by Walter Gilbert at Harvard. He received his M.Phil. from the Department of Biochemistry at Cambridge University, and earned a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology where he studied with Cyrus Chothia. After graduation, Brenner had a brief fellowship at the Japan National Institute of Bioscience, followed by postdoctoral research supervised by Michael Levitt at Stanford University School of Medicine.

Brenner’s research is primarily in the area of computational genomics, covering topics in individual genome interpretation, RNA regulation, protein structure, and function prediction. Brenner has a commitment to supporting open science and development of the scientific community. He is also currently a director of the Human Genome Variation Society and is a founding editor of PLoS Computational Biology. He was founding chair of the Computational Biology graduate program at Berkeley. He has served two terms as a director of the International Society for Computational Biology, was founding chair of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health’s Data Working Group Variant Annotation Task Team and was a founding director of the Open Bioinformatics Foundation, and is a member of the ClinGen Sequence Variant Interpretation Working Group. His recognitions including being a Miller Professor, a Sloan Research Fellow, a Searle Scholar, an AAAS Fellow, an ISCB Fellow, and a recipient of ISCB’s Overton Prize.

Greg Hampikian, Boise State University
Dr. Greg Hampikian is professor of Biology and Criminal Justice at Boise State University (BSU), founder and Director of the Idaho Innocence Project (IIP) at BSU. His TedX talk, “Forensic DNA Mixups” is on youtube. Hampikian’s New York Times Opeds, include "The Dangers of DNA Testing" (2018), "When May I Shoot a Student?" (2014), and “Men Who Needs Them?" (2012). A recent profile of his work appeared in Science (March 2016), and he is the only Idaho professor listed on the "Professor Watchlist." His book Exit to Freedom with exoneree Calvin Johnson, chronicles Mr. Jonson’s 17-year fight to prove his innocence using DNA. Hampikian's research includes discovery of the smallest sequences absent from nature that he has termed Nullomers. Nullomers have been used to protect forensic DNA samples against contamination, and to develop 198 Nullomer peptide drug candidates effective against cancer. He was awarded a Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of Connecticut, and has held positions at the Yale University Medical School, the Worcester Foundation, Emory University, La Trobe University (Melbourne, Australia), and the CDC (Atlanta, GA). He is best known as a DNA expert on Innocence Network cases around the world including that of Amanda Knox, Freddie Lawrence and Paul Jenkins (2018, with Montana Innocence Project), and Christopher Tapp (exonerated 2019) in Idaho.

Tuesday, January 7, 2020 at 8:40-9:40am

Roxana Daneshjou, Stanford University
Roxana Daneshjou is a graduate of the MD/PhD program at Stanford. Her PhD was done with Drs. Russ Altman and Carlos Bustamante. She is currently a research-track resident in the Dermatology Department at Stanford. She is the proud daughter of Iranian immigrants and a mom to an energetic one year old, Eliana.

Jonathan Haines, Case Western Reserve University
Dr. Haines is a genetic epidemiologist, Mary W. Sheldon M.D. Professor of Genomic Sciences, director of the Cleveland Institute for Computational Biology (CICB), and Chair of the Department of Population & Quantitative Health Sciences at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU). Dr. Haines has extensive experience in all aspects of human genetic epidemiology including both statistical and molecular analysis. His initial work helped identify the genes underlying over 20 different Mendelian disorders. He has been active in Illuminating the underlying genetic architecture of numerous common and complex genetic diseases for over 25 years, with a particular focus on neurological and ophthalmological diseases. His current research efforts are primarily focused on Alzheimer disease and age-related macular degeneration, with the goal of identifying genetic variation that either increases or decreases the risk and or progression of disease. He is the co-founder of numerous national and international consortia. A particular interest for his lab is the application and development of computational approaches to examine whole exome and whole genome data. A second strong interest is studying the genetics of Alzheimer disease and age-related macular degeneration in isolated and diverse populations, such as the mid-Western Amish communities of Ohio and Indiana.