We are pleased to announce the next speaker at the Virtual SIB Computational Biology Seminar Series:

  Francis Ouellette, Informatics and Biocomputing Program, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research(OICR)
“Biocuration activities for the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC)“
Thursday 4 December 2014 at 4 p.m. – Genopode Auditorium B – UNIL campus

Francis Ouellette is a Senior Scientist and Associate Director of the Informatics and Biocomputing platform at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR).
At the OICR, he oversees the curation of the International Cancer Genome Consortium data, and is involved in the oversight of many aspects and working groups at the ICGC. The International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) has been organized to launch and coordinate a large number of research projects that have the common aim of elucidating comprehensively the genomic changes present in many forms of cancers that contribute to the burden of disease in people throughout the world.
The original goals of the ICGC are to generate comprehensive catalogues of genomic abnormalities (somatic mutations, abnormal expression of genes, epigenetic modifications) in tumors from 50 different cancer types and/or subtypes which are of clinical and societal importance across the globe and make the data available to the entire research community as rapidly as possible, and with minimal restrictions, to accelerate research into the causes and control of cancer. We are now in a position to collect more than 70 different tumour types and subtypes from 17 regions in the world. The Data Coordination Centre (DCC) is responsible for gathering, organizing and distributing all of this information in a timely fashion. DCC staff are responsible for ensuring that data coming in is of the highest quality and in the most useful format for the community. The ICGC staff also facilitates communication among the members and provides a forum for coordination with the objective of maximizing efficiency among the scientists working to understand, treat, and prevent these diseases.

Francis Ouellette has been invited by the Ecole de Biologie de l’Université de Lausanne.
The seminar will be streamed on the web for those unable to attend it physically (https://collab.switch.ch/sib-cbss/). 

Best regards,
SIB – Virtual Computational Seminar Series