This award will facilitate a two-and-a-half day workshop on Bioinformatics which will be held in Little Rock, Arkansas during March 3-5, 2013. This workshop will bring life scientists and computational scientists together and address the need for cross-fertilization among different domains of bioinformatics. The workshop will also enable forming effective collaborations among EPSCoR jurisdictions in bioinformatics research and education. The workshop will also inform the participants of the interdisciplinary, computational and data- enabled science, cyberinfrastructure resources, and EPSCoR-related opportunities at the National Science Foundation.
Intellectual Merit: Bioinformatics is becoming increasingly data and computationally intensive. Biologists and computer scientists face computational as well as large data-related challenges. This workshop will focus on four thematic research areas: (1) Next Generation Sequencing and Data Analysis; (2) Protein Structure Prediction and Applications; (3) Systems Biology; and (4) Molecular Ecology. The workshop will provide opportunities for cross-disciplinary interactions and collaborations among life and computer scientists and to bridge the complementary knowledge gap. Participants will discuss and better understand the biological background of the computational challenges and computational tools available to biologists.
Broader Impacts: The workshop will enable and foster exchange of information and potential collaborations among bioinformatics researchers and educators in different EPSCoR jurisdictions. The workshop agenda includes cross-disciplinary training and tutorials for participants at different levels, including disciplinary researchers, technicians, junior scientists, and students. A compilation of bioinformatics research and education activities in EPSCoR jurisdictions and available resources will be prepared and broadly disseminated through the workshop website. Workshop activities and outcomes will be assessed through participant surveys on workshop experience and follow-up on the progress of interdisciplinary collaborations of the bioinformatics network initiated at the workshop.
Outcomes of this award: Emerged from the NSF EPSCoR-supported Workshop in Bioinformatics at Little Rock, Arkansas March 3-5, 2013, a new concept of "No-Boundary Thinking (NBT)" was proposed. The focus of NBT is no-boundary problem defining to address science challenges. The NBT working group had further meetings in Dartmouth College April 25-26, 2014, and Washington, DC, December 2-3, 2014. The NBT group currently consists of 31 individuals representing 22 institutions in 16 states. Two review papers were published: "No-boundary thinking in bioinformatics research." Huang X, Bruce B, Buchan A, Congdon CB, Cramer CL, Jennings SF, Jiang H, Li Z, McClure G, McMullen R, Moore JH, Nanduri B, Peckham J, Perkins A, Polson SW, Rekepalli B, Salem S, Specker J, Wunsch D, Xiong D, Zhang S, Zhao Z. BioData Mining 6:19, 2013. "Big Data - a 21st Century Science Maginot Line? No-Boundary Thinking: Shifting from the Big Data Paradigm." Huang X, Jennings SF, Bruce B, Buchan A, Cai L, Chen P, Cramer CL, Guan W, Hilgert UKK, Jiang H, Li Z, McClure G, McMullen DF, Nanduri B, Perkins A, Rekepalli B, Salem S, Specker J, Walker K, Wunsch D, Xiong D, Zhang S, Zhang Y, Zhao Z, and Moore JH. BioData Mining 8:7, 2015.
