The onslaught of raw data in organizations is rapidly becoming a real issue and a bottleneck. Simply having banks of clusters and storage devices to provide real actionable information is becoming inefficient. Learn how HPC centers and other organizations are gearing up for new ways of computing to manage the scaling challenges of bioinformatics data and new scientific problems with grid and cloud computing.
MONDAY, 5 OCTOBER
14:00-17:30 Pre-Conference Workshop * - Sequencing Data Storage
Co-organized by CHI and BioTeam
Premier Sponsor 
Matthew Trunnell, Manager, Research Computing, Broad Institute
Chris Dagdigian, Founding Partner and Director of Technology, BioTeam, Inc.
Guy Coates, Ph.D., Group Leader, Informatics System Group, The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
Mike Davis, Senior Director Product Marketing, Ocarina Networks
Additional Speakers to be Announced
BioTeam has been on the frontlines of next-generation sequencing integration, having helped several organizations with the unique next-gen IT, storage, and data management challenges. This workshop will present real-world customer experiences straight from the trenches. You’ll get practical information about the storage support needed by research organizations in the next-gen world.
*Separate registration required
16:00-18:30 Conference Registration
18:30 BIOTECHNICA Opening and European Award Ceremony plus Reception
TUESDAY, 6 OCTOBER
08:30-19:00 Conference Registration
08:50 Chairperson’s Remarks
Mr. Derek Burke, EMEA Marketing Director, Panasas, Inc
09:05 FEATURED SPEAKER
Computing and Storage Trends
Chris Dagdigian, Founding Partner and Director of Technology, BioTeam, Inc.
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09:35 Scaling Up Science and IT: Sanger Centre’s Perspective
Phil Butcher, Head of Systems, Sanger Centre
As the largest sequencing centre in Europe, the Sanger Institute makes a massive contribution to the worldwide collection of genomic information. A key challenge is identifying an appropriate storage infrastructure to manage the onslaught of raw data that continues to be generated. Additionally, there are challenges in the global environment with proper data handling and providing accessible tools to the smaller labs. This talk will present Sanger Institute’s perspective on scaling techniques and practical issues they are considering that address the data storage challenge.
10:05 Talk Title to be Announced
Speaker to be Announced
10:35 Coffee Break
11:00 Sweden at the Forefront: The Buildup of Computational Power and Large-Scale Storage for Gene-Sequence Data
Ingela Nyström, Ph.D., Director of UPPMAX, Centre for Image Analysis, Uppsala University
At UPPMAX, Uppsala University’s resource of high-performance computers and know-how of high-performance computing, we are installing a system of 2000 cores, 4 TB RAM, and 500 TB of storage capacities. The system is intended for researchers who deal with the enormous quantities of data from modern gene-sequencing technology. This talk will present our initial plans, changed decisions, and lessons learned during the buildup of our large-scale system.
11:30 Scaling Up Science and IT: Broad Institute’s Perspective
Matthew Trunnell, Manager, Research Computing, Broad Institute
One of the Broad Institute’s core missions is to discover, develop and optimize the critical technologies needed to obtain and analyze the massive amounts of genomic data being generated by scientists at the Broad and around the world. To address the influx of high-throughput data generation technologies, most notably next-generation DNA sequencing, we have scaled our data storage infrastructure by a factor of 15 in less than three years. This talk will discuss our approach to supporting research IT at scale with an emphasis on managing growth in a dynamic — and increasingly unpredictable — environment.
Sponsored by
12:00 Ultra-High Throughput Sequencing Facilities: Managing the Deluge of Data
Dirk Evers Ph.D., Director of Computational Biology, Illumina
As research organizations around the world increase their investment in ultra-high throughput sequencing facilities, the need to effectively process and manage the resulting high-value data becomes more and more pressing. Illumina, the leading provider of innovative sequencing technologies, recognizes the pivotal role that the right IT infrastructure can play in enabling world-class science. This presentation will introduce a practical solution that allows Illumina to support its breakthrough sequencing technologies with an equally strong IT infrastructure.
12:30-13:45 Lunch for Purchase in the Exhibit Hall and Exhibit Viewing
13:50 Chairperson’s Remarks
14:05 Talk Title to be Announced
Speaker to be Announced
14:35 Scaling Up Science and IT: Perspective from CSC - IT Center for Science, Ltd.
Kimmo Koski, Managing Director, CSC – IT Center for Science, Ltd.
CSC started its operations at the Finnish State Computer Center in 1971, as the technical support unit for Univac, which was the first academic mainframe in Finland. Ever since, CSC has successfully provided the Finnish academia with top IT technology for science. CSC provides Finland’s widest selection of scientific software and databases and Finland’s most powerful supercomputing environment that researchers can use via the Funet network. This talk will present CSC – IT Center for Science, Ltd.’s perspective on scaling techniques and practical issues they are considering that address the data storage challenge.
Sponsored by
15:05 HP peta-byte Scale Storage Solution for the Life Sciences: Mastering the Data Challenge in the Life Sciences
Xavier Delore, Product Manager Massive Scale-Out Storage, EMEA, Hewlett Packard
HP’s innovative solutions for management & storage of peta-byte scale data enables research to focus on what matters to them - science. Learn about HP innovations including massively scalable and affordable HP StorageWorks 9100 Extreme Data Storage system, which provides researchers with the storage volume required for instruments that generate terabytes of data per run.
15:20 Sponsored Presentation (Opportunity Available)
15:35 Refreshment Break
16:00 PRACE - Preparing for a European HPC Service
Thomas Eickermann, Ph.D., Head of Networking Division, Forschungszentrum Jülich; Project Manager of PRACE
The Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) prepares the creation of a persistent pan-European HPC service, consisting of several tier-0 centres providing European researchers with access to capability computers and forming the top level of the European HPC ecosystem. PRACE is a project funded in part by the EU’s 7th Framework Programme. This presentation will discuss the new distributed Research Infrastructure that will be implemented as early as end of 2009, beginning of 2010.
16:30 DEISA - On the Way towards a European HPC Ecosystem
Hermann Lederer, Ph.D., Head, High Performance Application Group, Garching Computing Centre of the Max Planck Society; Member, DEISA Coordination Team
The main objective of the DEISA Research Infrastructure is to advance computational sciences in Europe. Enabling and operating new challenging supercomputing applications is a central part. The DEISA Extreme Computing Initiative was launched in May 2005 by the DEISA Consortium as a way to enhance its impact on science and technology. The main purpose of this initiative is to enable a number of “grand challenge” applications in all areas of science and technology. These leading, ground breaking applications must deal with complex, demanding and innovative simulations that would not be possible without the DEISA infrastructure, and which benefit from the exceptional resources provided by the Consortium. This presentation will describe how DEISA is developing a European distributed high performance computing infrastructure and extending its collaborative environment for capability computing and data management.
17:00 Talk Title to be Announced
Speaker to be Announced
17:30 Move to Breakout Discussion Groups
17:45-19:00 Interactive Breakout Discussion Groups
19:00-21:00 CHI Reception
Sponsored by
WEDNESDAY, 7 OCTOBER
08:50 Chairperson’s Remarks
09:05 Maximizing Utility of the Cloud (60 minute presentation)
Speakers to be Announced
This talk will explore how life sciences is using cloud computing application, its challenges and effectiveness, how money can be saved by an organization, and regulatory compliance. Additionally, we will discuss commercial products already on the market as well as users who are setting up local cloud-like operations either as internal staging-areas before pushing to the cloud, or just through mistrust of using external cloud services for sensitive data (patient-, commercial-, or otherwise).
10:05 What the Cloud can do for Computational Life Sciences: Biocep's Unified Perspective
Karim Chine, Software Architect and Coordinator, Biocep
Wayne W. Jones, Shell Global Solutions
Biocep is an open-source infrastructure software that democratizes HPC and Cloud computing for life scientists, enables collaborative data analysis, and provides frameworks for the creation and delivery of Grid/Cloud-based analytical user interfaces. With Biocep, R/Scilab computational engines are abstracted with URLs and can run in the cloud. They can be interactively and securely controlled from the user's laptop either programmatically or via an extensible, highly productive data analysis workbench or from highly programmable spreadsheets. The computational engines can be used as clusters to solve computationally intensive problems or to build scalable web applications and effective data analysis pipelines in the cloud. They can also be used to expose functions as web services or nodes for workflow workbenches and they can be accessed simultaneously by several users to work with data collaboratively. Biocep has been deployed in several major organizations. Attendees will learn the details of this new platform and how they can take advantage of cloud computing to support R&D.
10:35 Coffee Break
11:00 SIMBioMS - IT Solution for Collaborative Discovery Projects in Biomedical Genomics
Maria Krestyaninova, Ph.D., Biomedical Informatics Coordinator, European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI)
SIMBioMS (simbioms.org) is a data management system with components for handling and combining sample data (SIMS), assays and measurement data from a wide range of technologies (AIMS), and for browsing, summarizing and annotating its complex data content (SAIL). It was initially designed within EU-funded epidemiology project seeking to discover biomarkers for diabetes type 2 and later on was expanded and re-used in a number of large-scale genomic projects involving academia, SME and pharma. SIMBioMS platform provides support for multi-partner biomedical data management from the moment of study design to the data analysis. While SIMBioMS features some of classical LIMS functionality, the main mission of the platform is to provide support management of large and complex data content within highly diverse research partnerships and large collaborative projects. This presentation will cover sample annotation and tracking, sample size estimation in cross-collection meta-studies, genetic and molecular data consistency, practical aspects of data standardization and harmonization in collaborative discovery projects.
11:30 Sage Bionetworks: Current Initiatives and New Directions
Stephen Friend, M.D., Ph.D., President, Sage Bionetworks
12:00 Talk Title to be Announced
GEANT & e-Infrastructure, Information Society and Media Directorate General (INFSO), European Commission
12:30-13:45 Lunch for Purchase in the Exhibit Hall and Exhibit Viewing
13:45 Close of IT Hardware for the Life Sciences Conference