Michael Gribskov, Ph.D.

Professor of Biological Sciences and Computer Science (by courtesy)

Purdue University, West Lafayette IN 
 

Dr. Gribskov graduated from Oregon State University in 1979 with a Bachelors of Science degree (with Honors) in Biochemistry and Biophysics. He then moved to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for graduate studies focused on the structure and function of the sigma subunit of E. coli RNA polymerase, receiving his Ph.D. in 1985. Dr. Gribskov studied x-ray crystallography as an American Cancer Society post-doctoral fellow at UCLA in the laboratory of David Eisenberg , and followed this with both crystallographic and computational studies at the National Cancer Institute. In 1992, Dr. Gribskov moved to the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California, San Diego where he was lead scientist in the area of computational biology and an adjunct associate professor in the department of Biology. From 2003-2007 Dr. Gribskov was the president of the International Society for Computational Biology, the largest professional society devoted to bioinformatics and computational biology.  In 2004, Dr. Gribskov moved to Purdue University where he holds an appointment as a full professor in the Biological Sciences and Computer Science departments.  Dr. Gribskov's interests range from the application of pattern recognition and machine learning techniques to biomolecules, to the design and implementation of biological databases and to the development of interactive and interoperable resources to support genomics and systems biology.

Dr. Gribskov is a past president of the International Society of Computational Biology.

  David J. States, M.D.,Ph.D.

Chief Scientific Officer                                           OncProTech LLC, Ann Arbor, MI      

Dr. States is a systems biologist and leader who helped to established the discipline of bioinformatics.  Dr. States has been a leader in establishing bioinformatics as a field including work on molecular modeling, genome mapping and sequencing and proteomics.  His contributions include establishing the structured nature of protein folding intermediates, the widely used molecular dynamics program CHARMM, and the development of advanced multidimensional NMR methods.

Dr. States has been involved in the Human Genome Project from its inception and helped to establish the NIH National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI).  He developed BLASTX with Warren Gish and XNU with Jean Michel Claverie, both tools remain widely used today.   He served as Director of Informatics and later PI of the Washington University Center for Genetics in Medicine assembling the physical map of the human X chromosome.  With David Botstein, he demonstrated the feasibility of EST sequencing, and his work on enhanced lane tracking algorithms doubled the throughput of the Washington University Genome Sequencing Center and greatly accelerated progress on expressed sequence tags (EST) sequencing. 

He received his MD and PhD from Harvard University and clinical training in internal medicine at the University of California, San Diego and the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.  He is board certified in internal medicine and is a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics Current work in the States lab focuses on the systems biology of the tumor microenvironment using state-of-the-art mass spectrometry, proteomics and bioinformatics strategies applied to mouse models for ovarian cancers. 

Dr. States is a member of the founding Board of Directors of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB)

Sultan Meghji

Vice President, Cloud Applications and Life Sciences with Appistry, Inc., St Louis, MO.

Mr. Meghji began his career nearly twenty years ago at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), where he developed artificial intelligence systems and first generation Internet technologies. He is a recognized leader in Enterprise Architecture, Innovation and Strategy and has served in leadership positions in IT and Enterprise Architecture at ABN AMRO, American Express, Monsanto and United Airlines.

He has held numerous CIO roles in academia and the private sector in areas as diverse as IT services, financial services and biotech. In addition, Sultan is an active volunteer for the IT Entrepreneurial Network (ITEN), Infragard and other St. Louis-centric groups. His current focus is on driving the vertical markets for Appistry as well as running the Life Sciences business component.

Peter Cooper, Ph.D.

Director Scientific Outreach and Training, NCBI

Peter Cooper directs the scientific outreach and training program for the National Center for Biotechnology Information at the National Library of Medicine. Peter has conducted and developed training courses for biologists in the use of NBCI molecular databases and has provided scientific user support for the NCBI since 1998.

Prior to joining the NCBI, Peter pursued diverse biological research interests including peptide neurochemistry, marine environmental toxicology, and taught biology and chemistry. Peter earned a BS from Virginia Tech, a MA in chemistry from the Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. in Marine Science from the College of William and Mary, School of Marine Science in 1996.