The pre-conference workshops are intended to serve as a resource for investigators, especially graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, who wish to become more familiar with some of the basic and/or state-of-the-art bioinformatic and biological technologies and concepts that will be discussed during the 2006 Systems Biology Meeting. The workshops will be comprised of several interactive tutorials providing background for the subsequent meeting. To maximize the benefit of the workshops being offered, attempts will be made to accommodate the specific needs of the registered workshop participants. Likewise, the workshop topics will be tailored to maximize the coverage of areas to be discussed in the ensuing meeting after abstracts have been selected for presentation. Additionally, several “hands-on" bioinformatic training and demo workshops in which expert investigators will demonstrate various existing and newly developed software tools and databases with interested participants in an interactive manner. Depending on interest, interactive bioinformatic training sessions will occur during the workshop and during the subsequent Systems Biology Meeting.

The Molecular Biology track will cover a range of issues to bring computational scientists up to speed on many of the molecular biology tools, technologies and concepts that are presently at the cutting edge of genome-scale systems biology research. Topics that will be covered include microarray technology, chromatin immunoprecipitation, ribonomics, microRNA, RACE, SNP analysis, quantitative RT-PCR, systems genetics and proteomics.
Molecular Biology Trainers:
Tarif A. Awad, Affymetrix
Leonardo Brizuela, Agilent Technologies
Fabiola Rivas, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Scott A. Tenenbaum, University at Albany-SUNY
Robert Williams, University of Tennessee

The Bioinformatics track will provide a comprehensive overview of computational approaches being applied to systems biology, with a particular focus on the analysis of genome-wide gene expression. Topics to be covered will include high-density microarray analysis, gene interacton modeling, molecular network analysis, comparative genomics and DNA/RNA motif identification.
Bioinformatics Trainers:
Jaroslaw (Jarek) Harezlak, Harvard University
Jessica Mar, Harvard University
Joel Rozowsky, Yale University
Andew Olson, Dhruv Pant, Ravi Sachidanandam,
Nihar Sheth & Xiaodong Tao, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Detailed Track Descriptions

Workshop attendees are strongly encouraged to arrive on the evening of Wednesday March 22 for a pre-workshop reception and discussion. The workshops will start promptly at 8am on Thursday morning.

To sign up for either workshop, please email Lauren Postyn (postyn@cshl.edu). Your enrollment will be confirmed via email after payment has been processed.

Minimum attendance per workshop track - 10 attendees
[Full reimbursement will be made if either track is cancelled due to lack of enrollment]

Pricing
Workshop Package - Academic Rate $395
Workshop Package - Corporate Rate $545
Workshop Package/No Housing - Academic Rate $320
Workshop Package/No Housing - Corporate Rate $445
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Packages include board and lodging for one night prior to the meeting, all training related materials, and attendance at one of the two workshop tracks.