VCU Biological Complexity

|| December 2004 ||

The Center for the Study of Biological Complexity will present its 2004 Annual Research Review: Focus on New Fellows & Emerging Research Wednesday, December 15th, 2004 from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at the Trani Center, Room 250. All fellows are encouraged to attend and participate. More Inforrmation

|| November 2004 ||

CSBC FEATURED IN THE BIOLOGICAL PHYSICIST The Center for the Study of Biological Complexity is featured in the October 2004 issue of The Biological Physicist, a newsletter of the American Physical Society (see page 2). The feature article outlined the mission, philosophy and goals of the Center, and highlights some of our progress towards implementing our objectives. The article, authored by Tarynn M. Witten, Ph.D., Senior Fellow and Director of Research and Development, Lemont B. Kier, Ph.D., Senior Fellow and Director of Programs and Fellows; and Gregory A. Buck, Ph.D., Director of the Center, also outlines the focus and orientation of the Center and some of the ongoing research. "That we were solicited to be featured in this newsletter shows that we are reaching a significant level of national and international recognition. This is a real feather in our caps", says Buck. "Like other high profile activities such as our NSF/NIH - sponsored Bioinformatics and Bioengineering Summer Institute, our comprehensive BS to Ph.D. - level training in bioinformatics, and our new international journal Chemistry and Biodiversity, the feature in the Biological Physicist emphasizes our commitment to mathematical and computational approaches to the Life Sciences." The Center for the Study of Biological Complexity is a focus of excellence launched by VCU Life Sciences, a unique, matrix academic organization that spans five schools and over 150 faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University.

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|| October 2004 ||

VCU SCIENTISTS DECODE GENOME OF POTENTIAL BIOTERROR AGENT The genome sequence of a dangerous parasite with bioterrorism potential has been decoded, enabling scientists to better understand the organism and work to develop vaccines and therapeutic drugs, a Virginia Commonwealth University scientist said in today's issue of the journal Nature. Read Press Release

|| October 2004 ||

New Journal Launched – Chemistry & Biodiversity The new journal, Chemistry and Biodiversity began publication this year with monthly issues appearing. The ninth issue has just been published. The journal is affiliated with the CSBC through a cooperative arrangement with the Editor, Volkan Kisakuric. CSBC Sr. Fellow, Monty Kier is the Associate Editor for North America. More Info

|| October 2004 ||

Course on Complexity Offered – staffed by CSBC Fellows A new course in the Life Science Integrated PhD Program is being offered for the first time. Under the direction of Prof. Don Young of the Biology Department and a Fellow in the CSBC, the course offers an introduction the the subject of complexity to new PhD students. Guest lecturers from the CSBC, presenting various aspects of complexity, include Candice Kent, Danail Bonchev, Tarynn Witten, Don Miculecky, and Monty Kier. More Info

Danail Bonchev Joins CSBC - internationally known scholar on board The CSBC proudly announces the appointment of Danail Bonchev as a Prof. of Biological Complexity in the CSBC. Danail is an international authority on topological characteristics of molecules and the use of information theory to encode functional attributes. His recent work involves the use of networks to model systems such as enzyme pathways. He is the author of over 100 scientific papers and several books.

|| September 2004 ||

Dr. Paul Seybold - visiting scholar at the CSBC The CSBC welcomes Prof. Paul Seybold as a visiting scholar for three months. Paul is a physical biochemist at Wright State Univ. in Dayton, Ohio. He is also a Fellow at the CSBC. He is known for his contributions to the study of the dynamics of kinetic reactions using cellular automata models. Paul will be working on the final stages of a book on cellular automata with co-authors, Monty Kier and C.-K. Cheng, both Fellows in the Center. He is also contributing to the new Life Science PhD program by participating in the modeling studies in the new Complexity course. website

|| August 2004 ||
Daniela Puiu, Programming Specialist with the CSBC participates in the CSB2004 conference with the following poster: SUPERCONTIGS: A Contig Scaffolding Tool. SUPERCONTIGS is a genome-finishing tool developed at CSBC that orders, orients and groups contigs based on clone pair information and an alignment with a related genome. It tool was initially developed for the Cryptosporidium hominis genome assembly. The tool is a Perl script that runs on Unix-like systems and is available at http://www.vcu.edu/csbc/bccl/research-
downloads.htm as a copy-left public domain program.

|| April 15, 2004 ||
VCURES and CSBC collaborate on Army project to do high performance computational modeling microcirculatory oxygen transport mapping in a model of hemmorrhage. Dr. Tarynn M. Witten, CSBC Director of Research and Development will be leading the computational effort. Equipping a Large Animal Intensive Care Unit for the Study of Combat Casualty Care Related Trauma and Multisystem Organ Failure: * Kevin R. Ward, MD: Principal Investigator: Departments of Emergency Medicine and Physiology R. Wayne Barbee, PhD: Co-Investigator: Departments of Emergency Medicine and Physiology Rao R. Ivatury, MD: Co-Investigator: Departments of Surgery and Emergency Medicine Award Amount: $ 354,000 This grant will allow for the purchase of monitoring, diagnostic and treatment equipment to develop a 2-bed large animal stand alone intensive unit. Read More Here.

|| March 31, 2004 ||
Dr. Lemont Kier, senior fellow of the CSBC and professor of Medicinal Chemistry at VCU, received Virginia's 2004 Life Achievement in Science Award last night at the Science Museum of Virginia. At VCU for nearly thirty years, Prof. Kier pioneered the development and use of non-empirical structure descriptors for in structure-activity analyses in drug design. In this research he and his colleagues developed applications of molecular orbital theory to predict preferred conformations and interaction calculations, the antecedent to current studies of pharmacophore prediction and docking. Prof. Kier approached the unification of structural attributes by integrating the topological and electronegativity aspects of atoms in molecules. This work has led to a new generation of structural indices called the electrotopological state (E-state). For the past decade Prof. Kier has studied the emergent properties of dynamic systems such as water and solutions, using cellular automata to simulate these phenomena dynamics. Dr. Kier is past chair of Medicinal Chemistry and is a founding Senior Fellow in the Center for the Study of Biological Complexity. He is the prolific author of many peer-reviewed publications, mongraphs, and textbooks. We are very pleased that Dr. Kier has recieved this recognition for his contributions to his field. List of all Outstanding Scientist Award Recipients

Our congratulations to Dr. Kier!

|| March 22, 2004 ||
BBSI Program receives grant to train area teachers. The CSBC's Bioinformatics and Bioengineering Summer Institute has received funding from the National Science Foundation to train two area science teachers in its program this summer. LaVerne Hamlin and Lydia Leecost bring a combined 20 years of experience in teaching science to Richmond City Schools and have the goal of bringing creative instructional opportunities in bioinformatics and bioengineering to their teaching assignments. Dr. Gregory Buck, Director of the CSBC and Principal Investigator of the BBSI Grant said that "Bringing these local science teachers into the program provides an exciting opportunity to introduce local students to these cutting-edge sciences. We are very enthused about having this participation from the Richmond community in our training programs".

Jeff Elhai, Senior Fellow of the CSBC and Director of the BBSI Program, also expressed enthusiasm about this opportunity. He plans to continue this program in subsequent summers with other local teacher-participants.

The Bioengineering and Bioinformatics Summer Institutes (BBSI) Program, funded by a collaboration between the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, has the stated goal "increasing the number of young people considering careers in bioengineering and bioinformatics at the graduate level and beyond." VCU's BBSI program is one of only nine like programs in the U.S. Funded for four years, starting in the summer of 2003, VCU's BBSI program attracts 12-14 rising junior or senior undergraduates for an ten week extensive didactic and 'real world' research experience in the emerging areas of bioinformatics and bioengineering. Taught by active researchers from VCU and elsewhere, the students are exposed to and participate in on-going cutting-edge research in these areas. Students are selected from very highly qualified applicants from across the country. Last year's class of 14 students was drawn from 13 different institutions as far away as Willamette University in Oregon. These students are returning this summer for their second year of training, and will overlap with a new class of 12 - 14 students.

"Our participating science teachers will be immersed in an intensive 10 week learning program during which they will have the opportunity to work with VCU faculty and staff, BBSI instructors, and both the first and second year students in the BBSI. We truly believe that this exposure will provide them an exciting summer" said Buck.

Additional information on the BBSI program and the Center for the Study of Biological Complexity is available at: http://www.vcu.edu/csbc and http://www.vcu.edu/csbc/bbsi.

|| March 17, 2004 ||
The CSBC Announces State Approval of VCU's New Undergraduate and Graduate Programs in Bioinformatics -- The CSBC is pleased to announce that on Tuesday, March 16th, our entire slate of new Bioinformatics academic programs was approved by the State Council for Higher Education of Virginia (SCHEV). These Bioinformatics programs include the state's first undergraduate major in Bioinformatics, two Masters degrees in Bioinformatics--the Master of Science in Bioinformatics, and the Master of Bioinformatics (a Professional Science Masters)--and an accelerated BS-Masters Program allowing selected students to earn both an undergraduate and graduate degree in as little as 5 years.

The undergraduate Bioinformatics major offers 3 Bioinformatics tracks--Biology Genomics, Computational Science, and Quantitative/ Statistics--so that students can match their interests and skills with the options available in the Bioinformatics field.

The CSBC within VCU Life Sciences and our partners across both campuses of VCU have developed these interdisciplinary Bioinformatics programs because we strongly believe the future of life science careers in government, industry and universities is an interdisciplinary future that will rely heavily on students' ability not only to understand a field of science or math but also on their being able to apply computer skills to organize and analyze complex data. While we anticipate considerable student interest in earning a Bioinformatics Masters and moving directly into entry-level jobs in the field, we also believe these programs will provide excellent training and motivation for top students to pursue interdisciplinary PhD training, in particular VCU's new and innovative PhD in Interdisciplinary Life Sciences.

To look more closely at these programs, check out the information within our website: http://www.vcu.edu/csbc/bioinformatics/. Read VCU Press Release Here.

While we are launching advertising of these programs, we hope you'll help us spread the word!

|| February 10, 2004 ||
Dr. Lemont Kier selected to receive Virginia's 2004 Life Achievement in Science Award. The Center for the Study of Biological Complexity is very pleased to announce that Dr. Lemont Kier, Senior Fellow of the Center and Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at VCU, has been selected to receive Virginia's 2004 Life Achievement in Science Award. Dr. Kier will receive the award from the Science Museum of Virginia, presented in the House of Delegates and Senate of the State of Virginia, on March 2.

Our congratulations to Dr. Kier!

|| February 9, 2004 ||
NEW JOURNAL HIGHLIGHTS VCU LIFE SCIENCES RESEARCH Chemistry & Biodiversity is official journal of VCU Center for the Study of Biological Complexity The publisher of one of the world’s most prestigious chemistry journals has launched a new publication that will serve as an official journal of the Center for the Study of Biological Complexity (CSBC) at Virginia Commonwealth University and raise its profile in the international scientific community. Read Press Release Here.
CHEMISTRY and BIODIVERSITY

|| January 29, 2004 ||
CSBC Researcher quoted in article "Secret for Longevity: Eat and Drink Sparingly and Get Physical to Enjoy a Full Life." Read Richmond Times-Dispatch article HERE.