Shoba Ranganathan is currently Chair Professor of Bioinformatics at Macquarie University (Australia). She is also Adjunct Professor at the National University of Singapore. Her research is focused on bioinformatics analysis at the genome, transcriptome and proteome levels. She holds a doctorate degree in Chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India under the supervision of A.S.N. Murthy, followed by post-doctoral training in biocomputing with Bernard Pullamn and Alberte Pullman at the Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique, Paris, France. Her working experience includes academic positions at the University of New Orleans, USA; University of Delhi, India; University of Sydney, Australia; Australian National University and the National University of Singapore, Singapore. S. Ranganathan has authored more than 80 publications. She was the first Australian Director elected to the Board of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) and is currently the President, Asia-Pacific Bioinformatics Network (APBionet) and Steering Committee member of the International Immunomics Society. She is an editorial board member and reviewer for several bioinformatics journals and has served on the organizing committee of various international conferences.
Yang Ueng-Cheng received his
B.S. Agriculture Chemistry, National Taiwan University, Taipei, ROC;
M.S. Biochemical Sciences, Princeton University, New Jersey, USA;
PhD. Molecular Biology, Princeton University, New Jersey, USA.
He is currently
Associate Professor, Institute of Biomedical Informatics, National Yang-Ming University;
Director, Center for Systems and Synthetic Biology, National Yang-Ming University;
Deputy Director, Information and Communication Center, National Yang-Ming University;
Director, Bioinformatics and Systems Biology Education Resource Center, Ministry of Education-Advisory office;
Vice President, Asia Pacific Bioinformatics Network (APBioNet);
and Committee Member, Asia Bioinformatics Research and Education Network (ABREN). He was previously
Director, Institute of Bioinformatics, National Yang-Ming University;
Director, Institute of Health Information and Decision Making, National Yang-Ming University;
Postdoc. Fellow, Department of Chemistry, Yale University;
Postdoc. Associate, Princeton University, Department of Molecular Biology.
He has received the IBM Shared University Research Award in 2008 for
his work in Bioinfomatics.
Bruno Gaeta is a Senior Lecturer with the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences of the University of New South Wales, Australia. He was from 1999 to 2001 the Director of Education and Senior Scientist, eBioinformatics/Entigen, one of the first ASP in Bioinformatics in the world, from 1993 to 1999 a Liaison Officer and then Education Officer of ANGIS, the Australian National Genome Information Service and from 1992 to 1993 a Research fellow, Heart Research Institute, Australia.
He is currently an elected member of the Board of Directors, International Society for Computational Biology;
elected Executive Committee member, Asia-Pacific Bioinformatics Network;
Chair, Education Committee, ISCB;
Board of Management, Bioinformatics Australia;
Conference Chair, Bioinformatics Australia 2006 Conference;
National Organising Committee, Genome Informatics Workshop 2008;
and a regular reviewer for Bioinformatics, BMC Bioinformatics, Briefings in Bioinformatics, Journal of Theoretical Biology, Nucleic Acid Research, Comparative and Functional Genomics, Biotechniques, PRiB 2007, InCoB 2006/2007, CASB 2006, ICISIP 2006, ISNIP 2004.
Title:
Running a bioinformatics undergraduate program - challenges and... more challenges
Abstract:
The Bachelor of Engineering in Bioinformatics at the University of New South Wales is one of the most successful undergraduate bioinformatics programs in Australia, but still remains a small "niche" program. This presentation will discuss the program structure, its curriculum and engineering emphasis, highlighting some of the challenges encountered in setting up and maintaining an educationally sound bioinformatics program that addresses the requirements of students, researchers and university administration.
Kwoh Chee Keong is currently
an Associate Professor at the Division of Information Systems,
School of Computer Engineering,
College of Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, where
he has been
since 1993. He received his Bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering (1st Class) and Master in Industrial System Engineering from the National University of Singapore in 1987 and 1991 respectively. He received his Ph.D. degrees from the Imperial College, University of London in 1995. His research interests include Data Mining and Soft Computing and Graph-Based inference; applications areas include Bioinformatics and Biomedical Engineering. He has done significant research work his research areas and published over 90 quality international conferences and over 30 journal papers. He has been often invited as a organizing member or referee and reviewer for a number of premier conferences and journals, including GIW, IEEE BIBM, RECOMB, PRIB etc. Dr. Kwoh is a member of The Institution of Engineers Singapore, Association for Medical and Bio-Informatics, Imperial College Alumni Association of Singapore (ICAAS). He has provided many service to professional bodies, and the Singapore and was conferred the Public Service Medal, the President of Singapore in 2008.
Tan Tin Wee was educated in Cambridge (Biochemistry BA), London (UCL – Molecular Biology and Biotechnology) and Edinburgh (recombinant chlamydial vaccine) and is currently a Member of the Institute of Biology (CBiol). He is presently an Associate Professor with the Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine and Master of Eusoff Hall of Residence at the National University of Singapore (NUS) where he has been working for the past 14 years.
He was a past President of the Association for Informatics in Medicine Singapore, now known as Association for Medical and BioInformatics Singapore (AMBIS), and is currently serving as a committee member.
During his tour of duty in NUS, he has achieved international stature in two major fields: Internet Technologies and Bioinformatics, distinguishing himself as a technology pioneer and inventor, academic, scientist, scientific and technology leader and activist, technopreneur and community worker.
He headed the NUS Technet Unit prior to its commercialization as Pacific Internet (NASDAQ:PCTNF) (1994-1995), founded the Internet Research and Development Unit (IRDU) which pioneered many Internet technologies (1995) in this region, established the Centre for Internet Research (CIR), founded the Bioinformatics Centre as its Director from 1996, founded the Singapore Advanced Research and Education Network SINGAREN as its first principal investigator in 1997, co-founded the Asia Pacific Advanced Network (APAN) in 1998 and held various posts there, was elected as chair of the Asia Pacific Networking Group (Asia Pacific’s oldest Internet association) from 1997 to 1999, served as advisor to the Director General of Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (2000-2002), represented Asia in the Coordinating Committee for Intercontinental Research Networking (CCIRN), served as Chief Editor of the Singapore Biochemical Society (early 1990s), founded the Asia Pacific Bioinformatics Network (APBioNet) in 1998 and is serving as Secretariat, co-founded the S* Life Sciences Informatics Alliance (2001), was elected Vice President and President of the Association for Informatics in Medicine Singapore, served as ExCo of the APRICOT conference, the International Conference for Bioinformatics (InCOB) and many other conferences, invented multilingual domain names and co-founded and served as CEO and elected Vice Chairman of the Multilingual Internet Names Consortium (MINC), co-founded Tamil Internet international conference in 1997 and is serving as ExCo of the International Forum for IT in Tamil (INFITT), co-founded the Enable2000 committee for Internet networking and computing for people with disabilities, served in National Council for Social Service (NCSS) committee for Computer Assisted Learning Project for Special Education Schools, and is currently the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Biotech, Committee for Science and Technology (COST) ASEAN, and a member of the Life Science Advisory Committee, Nanyang Polytechnic, among others.
For his work in these fields over the past two decades, he has consistently received national, regional and international recognition such as the Singapore Youth Award for excellence (1994), Vaccine Research Trust Annual Award (1989), Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI) Education award (1997), ASEAN Business Forum’s ASEAN Achievement Award (1997), Life Insurance Association (LIA) Award for community work, 7th Indian Cultural Festival Innovation Award (1998) for contributions to Tamil Internet, National University of Singapore Annual Staff Achievement Award (1998), World Congress for Medical Informatics MEDINFO’92 Gold Medal, and he is on the International Who’s Who of Professionals (1999) and a member of the exclusive World Technology Network (2001) as one of 450 top scientists, entrepreneurs financiers, journalists, academics and policy makers world wide.
He is also entrepreneurial, having spun off or been involved with several companies including Bioinformatrix Pte Ltd (1997), Kris Technology Inc Menlo Park (1998) now GeneticXchange Inc, i-DNS.net International Inc (1999), BTG Pte Ltd (2000), KOOPrime Pte Ltd (2001). He has served as consultant to a number of organizations, including the management of Singapore Network Services SNS, (now called Crimson Logic) and currently serves as a Board Director, Chairman of the Nominations Committee, member of Audit Committee, Remunerations Committee and Divestment/Investment Committee of Keppel Telecommunications and Transportation Ltd, a publicly listed Singapore government linked company.
Over the years he has raised and/or managed about S$60M of research grant or spinoff funds ($28M SINGAREN, $15M BIC, $9M for I-DNS.net and Kris, $5.5M for Technet and IRDU, etc). The spin-off companies coordinated through BTG Pte Ltd, have raised another more than $30M (I-DNS.net US$20M, GeneticXchange >US$2M, KOOPrime >S$600K).
He is happily married with a daughter and a son, and lives in Eusoff Hall managing the daily activities of some 500 students.
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