Founded in 2012, CEHG is a research program that fosters interdisciplinary research. Home to more than 25 faculty and more than 200 grads and postdocs, CEHG bridges the divides between various member labs across Stanford campus.
The 2015 CEHG Genetics and Society Symposium (GSS15), which took place on April 13th and 14th in Stanford’s Paul Brest Hall, was a smashing success. It featured 25 speakers from Stanford campus and the San Francisco Bay academic and scientific industry communities. Approximately 175 Stanford affiliates and non-affiliates came together to celebrate the Center’s spirit of interdisciplinary collaboration and meet with experts in the fields of computational, evolutionary and human genomics This is a significant increase from last year’s 150 attendees!
The Mission:
The Genetics and Society Symposium is integral to CEHG’s mission: it provides postdocs and graduate fellows with the opportunity to share their developing research with faculty advisors and their colleagues, encourages conversation between faculty working in diverse scientific disciplines across campus, and introduces CEHG members to speakers from around the Bay Area and beyond (and vice versa).
The Venue:
As you can see from our photos of the space and catering service, Paul Brest Hall was the perfect home for this year’s two-day symposium. The hall was spacious, the food delicious, the staff hands on, and the outdoor picnic area well suited for our lunch and coffee breaks. We enjoyed the venue so much, in fact, that CEHG staff are currently in the process of booking the space for next year!
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- The entrance to Paul Brest Hall.
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- The outdoor dining area, where we enjoyed our meals and coffee breaks.
The Speakers:
GSS15 featured four brilliant keynote speakers, each distinguished in his/her field of research.
Gene Myers and CEHG Exec Committee members Marc Feldman, Chiara Sabatti, and Carlos Bustamante
Founding director of a new Systems Biology Center at the Max-Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dr. Eugene (Gene) Myers presented his open-sourced research on the resurrection of de novo DNA sequencing. Best known for the development of BLAST, the most widely used tool in bioinformatics and the assembler he developed at Celera that delivered the fly, human, and mouse genomes in a three-year period, Dr. Myers participated in GSS15, courtesy of DNAnexus. Follow his blog: https://github.com/thegenemyers.
Co-founding director Carlos Bustamante and Ed Green catch up during a break at GSS15.
Assistant Professor in Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Richard (Ed) Green presented his research on a novel approach for highly contiguous genome assemblies, which draws on his work as an NSF Fellow at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany and head of an analysis consortium responsible for publishing the draft genome sequence of Neanderthal. Click here for his 2014 CARTA talk, “The Genetics of Humanness: The Neanderthal and Denisovan Genomes.
Dr. Michelle Mello, Stanford Law School and School of Medicine
Michelle Mello, Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and Professor of Health Research and Policy in Stanford’s School of Medicine, presented findings from her extensive research on the ethics of data sharing. As the author of more than 140 articles and book chapters on the medical malpractice system, medical errors and patient safety, public health law, research ethics, the obesity epidemic, and pharmaceuticals, Dr. Mello provided a valuable perspective from the intersections of law, ethics, and health policy. Click here to read Dr. Mello’s SLS profile.
Dr. Ami Bhatt, Stanford Medicine
Ami Bhatt shared her passion for improving outcomes for patients with hematological malignancies in her talk, “Bugs, drugs, and cancer.” Best known for her recent work demonstrating the discovery of a novel bacterium using sequence-based analysis of a diseased human tissue, her research has been presented nationally and internationally and published in 2013 in the New England Journal of Medicine. Click here for links to Dr. Bhatt’s CAP profile and lab homepage.
We had a large group of CEHG faculty members at this year’s event, showcasing the cutting edge research being done in CEHG labs across Stanford campus and indicating considerable faculty commitment to ensuring the Center’s continuing success.
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- Dr. Julia Salzman
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- Dr. Mike Snyder
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- Dr. Stuart Kim
Our symposium would not be complete without our invited CEHG Fellows. These speakers were nominated by organizing committee members to present on topics relating to their CEHG-funded research projects. These young scholars embody CEHG’s continuing commitment to provide funding support to researchers as they transition from graduate studies to postdoctoral scholarships.
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- Dr. Rachael Bay
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- Rachel Goldfeder
The Workshop:
There was standing room only when facilitators Chiara Sabatti (Associate Professor of Health Research and Policy at Stanford), Ken Lange (Chair of the Human Genetics Department at UCLA), and Suyash Shringarpure (postdoctoral scholar in Stanford’s Bustamante Lab) presented their approaches to contemporary problems in statistical genetics!
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- Dr. Ken Lange, UCLA
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- Dr. Chiara Sabatti, Stanford
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- Dr. Suyash Shringarpure, Stanford
Social Media:
Did you know? CEHG is on social media!
GSS15 social media moderators, Bridget Algee-Hewitt, Jeremy Hsu, Katie Kanagawa, and Rajiv McCoy were posting live throughout both days of the event. And our efforts to reach the larger community paid off, with a total reach of 815 on Facebook and more than 7,000 impressions on Twitter!
To catch up on our GSS15 coverage, check out our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/StanfordCEHG?ref=hl and our Twitter feed @StanfordCEHG. Follow both to make sure you are the first to know when we post CEHG-related news and announcements.
Want to know when speaker videos from the symposium will be available on CEHG’s forthcoming youtube channel? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
Special Thanks:
From left to right: Bridget Algee-Hewitt, Cody Sam, Yang Li, Anand Bhaskar, and Katie Kanagawa
The GSS15 organizing committee—including Bridget Algee-Hewitt, Anand Bhaskar, Katie Kanagawa, Yang Li, and Cody Sam—would like to take this opportunity to thank CEHG Directors Carlos Bustamante and Marc Feldman, Executive Committee members Hank Greely, Dmitri Petrov, Noah Rosenberg, and Chiara Sabatti, event volunteers Alex Adams, Maude David, and Chris Gignoux, event photographer Deneb Semprum, and everyone who attended this year’s symposium.
We hope you enjoyed attending as much as we enjoyed working behind-the-scenes. We hope to see you all again at GSS16! If you are interested in volunteering for future CEHG events, please contact us at stanfordcehg@stanford.edu.
Upcoming CEHG events:
Don’t miss our popular weekly Evolgenome seminar series, which will continue through Spring term, usually on Wednesdays at noon (location varies). Lunch is always provided. Details will follow, but here is a quick overview so you can mark your calendars!
April 29: Fernando Racimo (Nielsen/Slatkin Lab)
May 6: Pleuni Pennings (UCSF)
May 20: Kelly Harkin
June 3: Sandeep Ventakaram (Petrov Lab)
June 10: Emilia Huerta-Sanchez
the CEHG blog 