W9: Growth Strategy: Leveraging Cloud Scalability to Enable Rapid Growth and Change
Tuesday, April 5, 2016 | 12:30 – 4:00 pm
Short Description: Cloud computing enables large and small business and academic researchers to rapidly grow and accommodate changing compute/data demands. Our workshop will walk participants through how they can leverage a variety of cloud-based high-performance computing solutions to support fast growth, change, and demand in genomics and related bioscientific fields.
Plan: We will combine a short tutorial format with invited speakers to give participants an opportunity to see how stakeholders from a variety of fields leverage cloud-based high-performance computing to meet the needs typical to small, fast-growth bioscience companies, academic researchers and related settings. The presentation will be vendor-neutral, and not require previous cloud computing expertise. Participants should leave the workshop with a clear idea of how they can enable rapid scalability of their own scientific HPC projects on a variety of cloud computing platforms.
12:30 pm Welcome and Introductions
R. Mark Adams, Ph.D., Partner and Computational Biologist, GroupEP
12:45 Cloud Computing for Scalability
Benjamin Breton, Senior Data Scientist, Good Start Genetics
1:15 Scalable Cloud Computing at Google Genomics
Benny Ayalew, Solution Engineer Lead, Life Sciences, Google
1:45 Scalable Cloud Computing in Government Research
Anthony R. Kerlavage, Ph.D., Chief, Cancer Informatics Branch, National Cancer Institute
2:00 Refreshment Break
2:30 Scalable Cloud Computing in Industry
Jason Stowe, CEO, Cycle Computing
3:00 Scalable Cloud Computing in Consulting
Michael Keller, Ph.D., Senior Associate, Booz Allen Hamilton
3:30 Panel Discussion with Instructors
4:00 Close of Workshop
Instructors
R. Mark Adams, Ph.D., Partner and Computational Biologist, GroupEP
Dr. Adams has worked in the field of bioinformatics and data analytics for more than 15 years and brings extensive experience in the strategy, design and implementation of large-scale informatics organizations and systems in support of key strategic initiatives. He was previously the CIO at Good Start Genetics and, prior to that, at Bridgewater Associates, Ltd., where he developed unique data warehousing and machine learning approaches to support the world’s largest hedge fund. Previously, Dr. Adams was a principal with Booz Allen Hamilton, where he created a leading biomedical informatics consulting practice with a primary focus on informatics strategy for clients in the commercial, government and nonprofit markets. A pioneer in the use, development and deployment of large-scale, open-source software in the national and international bioinformatics community, Dr. Adams is also an expert on building communities comprised of academic, industry and government partners to fund and address healthcare issues. Dr. Adams led some of the earliest commercial bioinformatics efforts to explore and use genomic and genetic variation data at Variagenics (Cambridge, MA), where he was vice president of bioinformatics, and Incyte (Palo Alto, CA) where he worked with Temple Smith, Ph.D., to build the company’s first informatics pipeline, supporting high-throughput SNP genomics. Dr. Adams holds a B.A. from Oberlin College and a Ph.D. from Baylor College of Medicine.
Benny Ayalew, Solution Engineer Lead, Life Sciences, Google
Benny Ayalew is a Solution Engineer Lead for Life Sciences on Google’s Cloud Platform field team. With nearly two decades of technology experience in Silicon Valley, he now works closely with NGS-focused customers and partners across both research and clinical settings who aim to transform the delivery of healthcare through the use of Google’s Big Data and massive compute assets. Benny works directly with Stanford University, The Broad Institute and most recently had a European stint in France engaging directly with research institutes and biopharma. Benny is a frequent speaker at community hackathons and Google events within the genomics and life sciences domains. Prior to Google, Benny was a Sr. Technical Architect at VMware and previously at Microsoft for over a decade focusing on distributed systems monitoring, automation, security and management for healthcare and biopharma customers as one of his key industry segments. Benny studied Informations systems engineering (ISE) at the State University of New York in Stony Brook and served two terms as president for the university’s National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) chapter.
Benjamin Breton, Senior Data Scientist, Good Start Genetics
Ben has worked at Good Start Genetics for the last 3 years. He helped it go from a 10-person startup to a successful business. The work along the way has involved everything from helping get a LIS in place for the clinical lab to optimizing NGS pipelines in a HPC environment. More recently he has been in charge of migrating and optimizing in-house clinical NGS pipelines to run on cloud compute infrastructure. He has a BS in Biology with Bioinformatics Option from UMass Lowell.
Michael Keller, Ph.D., Senior Associate, Booz Allen Hamilton
Dr. Keller has over 12 years of experience at Booz Allen Hamilton as a biomedical informatics professional with blended capabilities in technology and strategic consulting, grounded in a scientific foundation. His professional experience includes developing open source informatics implementation strategies across federal, commercial and not-for-profit clients focused on genotype/phenotype associations studies and exploring how whole genome data can be used to inform clinical decision. His expertise also focuses on how semantics can be used to enable data description and annotation, integration, and ultimately knowledge discovery that will continue to propel basic to clinical research and inform clinical care. Dr. Keller holds a BS in Molecular Biology from Lehigh University and a Ph.D. from Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Microbiology and Immunology.
Anthony R. Kerlavage, Ph.D., Chief, Cancer Informatics Branch, National Cancer Institute
Dr. Kerlavage serves at the National Cancer Institute’s Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology (NCI/CBIIT), where he is the Chief of the Cancer Informatics Branch. Major program areas in his branch include omics data management and analysis, cloud computing, imaging informatics, clinical trials infrastructure and decision support, and semantics and interoperability; all with a strong emphasis on open software and open data. Prior to joining the NCI in 2011, Dr. Kerlavage spent over 25 years in the public and private sector as a leader in bioinformatics and genomics. After his postdoctoral work at University of Pennsylvania, he spent seven years at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) working on the structure of neurotransmitter receptors and on identifying genes expressed in the brain. He left the NIH to become a founding member of The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), focusing on informatics support for whole genome sequencing and analysis, and subsequently, Celera Genomics, where he managed their online information business. He spent several years at Applied Biosystems and Life Technologies, where he supported global customers with intelligent monitoring systems for scientific instrumentation, LIMS systems, and computational infrastructure support for next-generation sequencing technologies. Dr. Kerlavage received an MS and Ph.D. from UC San Diego, and his undergraduate degree from Penn State, all in Chemistry.
Jason Stowe, CEO, Cycle Computing
Jason Stowe is a seasoned entrepreneur, and the founder and CEO of Cycle Computing, the leader in cloud computing orchestration software for Big Compute and Big Data. Under Jason’s leadership, Cycle Computing products have helped Fortune 500 companies in a variety of industries including Life Sciences, Manufacturing, Financial Services and Insurance, and Government. Jason has been featured in New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Wired, BusinessWeek, Bio-IT World and Forbes. Starting with three initial Fortune 100 clients, Jason has grown the business to deploy proven implementations at Fortune 500s, SMBs and government and academic institutions including JP Morgan Chase, The Hartford Insurance Group, Johnson & Johnson, Purdue University, Pfizer and Lockheed Martin. Jason attended Carnegie Mellon and Cornell Universities, and volunteered/guest lectured for the Entrepreneurship program at Cornell’s Johnson Business School.