Speakers will explore new horizons in genomics during the three-day section (May 5-7) of the symposium titled, "The Genome and the Computational Sciences: The Next Paradigms," supported by a series of question-and-answer forums dubbed "sweat box sessions." Among the speakers will be Eric Davidson, a cell biologist at the California Institute of Technology who first mapped the genome of a sea urchin; Richard Lewontin, a pioneer of population genetics at Harvard University; David Shaw, chief scientist at D.E. Shaw Research and a science adviser to President Obama; Martha Bulyk, a comparative genomics specialist at Harvard Medical School; and Jonathan Yewdell, chief of the cellular biology section in the Laboratory of Viral Diseases at the National Institute of Allergy at the NIH.

The symposium will begin with two days of talks (May 3-4) celebrating the life of John von Neumann, a trailblazing physicist who is perhaps best known his role in the early development of computers. As director of the Electronic Computer Project at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study in the 1940s and 1950s, von Neumann developed MANIAC (mathematical analyzer, numerical integrator and computer), which at the time was the fastest computer of its kind. Von Neumann's daughter, Marina von Neumann Whitman, professor of business administration and public policy at the University of Michigan, will reflect on her father's accomplishments. Other speakers include Leon Cooper, Brown professor and Nobel laureate in physics; Ken Arrow, Nobel laureate in economics; and John Conway, the John von Neumann Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University.

"We are all excited to hear speakers of the highest scientific stature in biology, computer science, economics, mathematics and physics who will lecture on the von Neumann legacy and the Genome era," said Sorin Istrail, the Julie Nguyen Brown Professor of Computational and Mathematical Sciences, professor of computer science and chair of the symposium.

The symposium comes as Brown expands its programs in genomics and computation. This fall, the University will welcome its first class of doctoral candidates in computational molecular biology. The Ph.D. program will train students in computational, mathematical, and statistical sciences while providing a foundation in molecular biology.

Source: Brown University