IT Professionals New Zealand | Te Pou Hangarau Ngaio

2016 Gibbons Lecture 2: Finding your place in the genome

2016 Gibbons Lectures in association with IITP

The Computer Science Department at the University of Auckland, in association with IITP, is pleased to announce the Gibbons Lecture Series for 2016. This year the lectures address aspects of the application of Information Technology in Medicine.

The applications discussed range from modeling of human physiology and analysis of DNA to the evolution of CT scanning and improved management of chronic illness.

Lecture 2: Finding your place in the genome: assembly, annotation, association 

To an extent that would have been astonishing a century ago, DNA copying and transcription turns out to be a digital process.

The copying mechanism allows tiny amounts of DNA to be amplified; the base-pairing of the double helix lets us read out a sequence, usually by adding fluorescent tags to the DNA bases. With three billion letters of genome, much of which is poorly understood, computers need to do nearly all the work.

The talk will discuss three areas of IT involvement - DNA sequencing, Annotation (looking up what is known or can be guessed about a stretch of genome) and Association studies (relating differences in the DNA sequence to differences in biology and health).

About the Speaker

Thomas Lumley is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. He has a PhD in Biostatistics from the University of Washington, an MSc in Applied Statistics from the University of Oxford, and a BSc(Hons) in Pure Mathematics from Monash University. He worked at the University of Washington for 12 years and moved to Auckland in 2010.

At the University of Washington, Professor Lumley became closely involved with the CHARGE Consortium of large-scale genetic cohort studies, which has published over 400 papers on genetic associations in humans. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and of the Royal Society of New Zealand, and member of the R Core Development Team 

Registration Details:

Attendance is free, however please register below for catering and to secure your place.

Please note that this session may be video or audio recorded for viewing by other members at a later date. As it is possible that audience members may be incidentally recorded, please let us know if you specifically want to be excluded and we will ensure you are not shown.