A Collaboration of Baylor College of Medicine, Rice University, University of Houston, University of Texas Health Science Center, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and Institute of Biosciences & Technology of Texas A&M Health Science Center
www.gulfcoastconsortia.org
2018 John S. Dunn Foundation Collaborative Research Award RFA
The Gulf Coast Consortia (GCC) is pleased to announce the RFA for the 2018 John S. Dunn Foundation Collaborative Research Award Program. Launched in 2009 as a 10-year program with generous support from the John S. Dunn Foundation, this seed grant program continues to build the collaborative environment of the Bioscience Research Collaborative (BRC) and the interdisciplinary and interinstitutional culture of the Gulf Coast Consortia. To be eligible for research or event awards, new collaborative groups must include one BRC tenant (list provided on website) and must propose a new research project or event. Preproposals will be due on June 1, 2018. More information or contact Suzanne Tomlinson.
UPCOMING GCC EVENTS
Antimicrobial Resistance and Stewardship Seminar, May 24
We invite you to attend our upcoming Antimicrobial Resistance Seminar that will feature Henry Chambers, MD from UCSF Clinical & Translational Sciences Institute, San Francisco General Hospital. Dr. Chambers will discuss an “Update on Staphylococcal Bacteremia.” The seminar will take place at noon, in the McGovern Medical School (MSB2.103), 6431 Fannin. No registration is required, but free box lunches will be available for the 1st 50 attendees. For more information, contact Suzanne Tomlinson.
Reproducible Research (RR) with R and RStudio Workshop, June 6
First in the series of the GCC Rigor and Reproducibility (RR) Program targeted modules, this workshop will: 1) discuss examples motivating the shift to RR; 2) survey the simple nature of the most common problems; 3) discuss organizing data as projects; 4) use Rstudio, knitr, and rmarkdown to illustrate the use of literate programming to interleave text describing the analyses with the code producing the results; 5) use Rstudio, devtools, and roxygen2 to construct a basic R package; 6) survey other commonly used tools and give pointers to how they might be used and where to learn more. This course will take place from presumes some working knowledge of R. Attendees are requested to bring laptops with recent versions of R and Rstudio installed, as well as the R packages knitr, rmarkdown, devtools, roxygen2, and RTools (this last is for Windows PCs; it’s required to compile R packages). BioScience Research Collaborative, Room 1003, 6500 Main St Limited to the first 30 registrants. 10 am- 2:30 pm Registration
Research Mentor Training Workshop for Faculty, June 12
This workshop is designed for faculty at any level to develop skills and insight in mentoring young scientists and to provide the opportunity for interactions between mentors at different institutions and in different disciplines. Facilitators are Vikki McDonnell and Bob Tillman, both master trainers with the National Research Mentoring Network. Time: 9:30 am - 3:30 pm; lunch will be provided. Location: BioScience Research Collaborative, Room 106, 6500 Main Street. Registration is full. If you would like to be placed on the waitlist, please email Dawn Koob.
Scientific Data Integrity Workshop, June 13
Second in the series of the GCC Rigor and Reproducibility (RR) Program targeted modules, this workshop is designed to cover fundamental elements necessary to help assure the quality and integrity of data derived from research studies. The workshop will review best practices for documentation of research activities, data capture, data (and document) management, and introduce risk mitigation strategies to enhance study reproducibility. A combination of mini lectures, case studies, and group exercises will comprise the activities. Knowledge gained will allow attendees to implement lessons learned within their research environment as elements of a quality system or internal to an individual research project. BioScience Research Collaborative, Room 1003, 6500 Main St 10 am -2:30 pm Limited to the first 50 registrants. Registration
2nd Annual Antimicrobial Resistance and Gut Health, June 15
Confirmed speakers include Phillip Hylemon, Virginia Commonwealth School of Medicine; Jonathan Monk, University of California San Diego; Ken Blount, Rebiotix; Jennifer Auchtung, Baylor College of Medicine; Qinglong Wu, Texas Children’s Hospital; Samuel Shelburne, MD Anderson; Eugénie Bassères, University of Houston; Wadud Khan, Texas Children’s Hospital; Kathleen McAllister, Texas A&M; Bradley Endres, PhD, University of Houston; and James Collins, Baylor College of Medicine. Attendees will also have the opportunity to register for a short workshop over “Whole Genomic Modeling” (see below). Conference website Registration
Workshop: Building and using genome-scale models of metabolism to study microbial pathogens, June 15
This exciting workshop will take place during the afternoon of the 2nd Annual Antimicrobial Resistance and Gut Health Symposium (see above), from 3-5pm. During this hands-on, interactive workshop, Jonathan Monk, UCSD will cover topics such as “Restructuring Metabolic Networks,” “Determining the Phenotypic Potential of Reconstructed Networks,” and “Basics and Applied Uses,” and participants will work through examples. Only symposium registrants will be permitted to register for the workshop. Note that although registration for the symposium is required, workshop participants will be required to submit a second registration as participation will be limited to the first 20 registrants. More details can be found on the symposium website, but once you have registered for the symposium, you will need to forward your symposium registration confirmation to Dawn Koob, who will then register you for the workshop.
q-bio 2018 Conference, BioScience Research Collaborative, June 26-29
The goal of the q-bio Conference is to enrich the connection between modeling and quantitative experimentation in biology. This year’s conference features invited speakers doing innovative work in biomechanics, biological physics, systems and synthetic biology. Faculty, grad students and postdocs are encouraged to attend. The GCC/Keck Center is a co-administrator for this international conference. Please see website for details.
Save the Date: 28th Annual Keck Research Conference, Data Science and Machine Learning for Biomedicine, October 26, 2018
This annual conference highlights emerging areas of quantitative biomedical science important to our community and provides an opportunity to showcase, via poster session, the diverse research of trainees affiliated with GCC/Keck Center training programs and other institutional programs. This year, the conference focus is on Data Science and Machine Learning for Biomedicine. Confirmed speakers include Payel Das, Technical Lead, AI Solutions, IBM Watson Research Center; Casey Greene, Assistant Professor, Systems Pharmacology & Translational Therapeutics, UPenn; Jennifer Neville, Associate Professor, Computer Science and Statistics, Purdue; Lucila Ohno-Machado, Professor, Biomedical Informatics, UC San Diego; and Christopher Re, Associate Professor, Computer Science, Stanford. Organizers are Jim Briggs, University of Houston, Lydia Kavraki, Rice University (chair), and Chris Jermaine, Rice University. The conference will be at the BioScience Research Collaborative, 6500 Main St. More information, including details about submitting a logo for the conference logo contest, will be available soon on the conference website.
Save the Date: 2nd Annual Texas Medical Center Antimicrobial Resistance and Stewardship Conference, January 23-25, 2019
Please make plans to join us for this outstanding line-up of internationally-renowned experts in antimicrobial resistance and stewardship. Confirmed non-local speakers include Alessandra Carattoli, University of Rome; Ashley Robinson, University of Mississippi; Robert Bonomo, Case Western; Gerry Wright, McMaster University, Canada; Thomas Lodise, Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences; Robin Patel, Mayo Clinic; Vance Fowler, Duke University School of Medicine; Arnold Bayer, UCLA; Scott Evans, Harvard; Jose Munita, Universidad del Desarrollo, Chile; Ruth Lynfield, Minnesota Dept. of Health; Timothy Jenkins, Denver Health Medical Center; Michael Hill, St. Tammany Parish Hospital; Julia Szymczak, University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine; Shivani Patel, Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital; Roy Chemaly, MDA; Luis Ostrosky-Zeichner, UTHealth; Samuel Aitken, MDA; Charles Darkoh, UTHealth; Yousif Shamoo, Rice; Truc Tran, UTHealth; Anthony Maresso, BCM; William Miller, UTHealth; Vincent Tam, UH; Herbert Dupont, UTHealth; Tor Savidge, BCM; Jessica Galloway-Pena, MDA. Stay tuned as we continue to add new confirmed AMR experts to the agenda. For sponsorship opportunities, please contact Suzanne Tomlinson.