A Collaboration of Baylor College of Medicine, Rice University, University of Houston, University of Texas Health Science Center, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and Institute of Biosciences & Technology of Texas A&M Health Science Center
www.gulfcoastconsortia.org
2018 John S. Dunn Foundation Collaborative Research Award RFA
The Gulf Coast Consortia (GCC) is pleased to announce the RFA for the 2018 John S. Dunn Foundation Collaborative Research Award Program. Launched in 2009 as a 10-year program with generous support from the John S. Dunn Foundation, this seed grant program continues to build the collaborative environment of the Bioscience Research Collaborative (BRC) and the interdisciplinary and interinstitutional culture of the Gulf Coast Consortia. To be eligible for research or event awards, new collaborative groups must include one BRC tenant (list provided on website) and must propose a new research project or event. Preproposals will be due on June 1, 2018. More information or contact Suzanne Tomlinson.
UPCOMING GCC EVENTS
Keck Seminar April 13
Yu Liu, University of Houston, will present H19X Regulates Growth and Metabolism in Striated Muscles. Seminar at 4pm. Networking/refreshments follow at 5pm, BioScience Research Collaborative, 6500 Main St, Room 280. Seminars are free and open to the public. Seminar Schedule Live webcast
Join us April 20 for our last seminar of the semester and academic year. Marc Morais, UTMB, will present Looking Under the Hood of a Viral dsDNA Packaging Motor. Trainees, students, and postdocs: Bring Your Mentor/PI (and be eligible to win a $50 gift certificate!). Seminar at 4pm. Networking/refreshments follow at 5pm, BioScience Research Collaborative, 6500 Main St, Room 280.
NeuroNex DataJoint Training Workshop, April 19-20
In this 2-day, hands-on NeuroNex workshop, participants will learn to build relational databases to support data pipelines for complex scientific projects using the open-source DataJoint framework. The workshop will be taught in Python with brief discussions of the MATLAB equivalent. Although DataJoint is a general framework, illustrating examples and worked problems will be based on common neuroscience experiments and recording modalities. We invite scientists (faculty, postdocs, grad students) who are involved in acquisition, processing, and analysis of data in neuroscience and related fields, particularly those that are part of collaborative projects. Basic knowledge of Python is required for solving exercise problems. Contact: Dimitri Yatsenko, dvyatsen@bcm.edu. BioScience Research Collaborative, 6500 Main St, Room 280, Registration
UTMB 23rd Annual Sealy Center for Structural Biology Symposium, April 28
Confirmed speakers include: Grant Jensen, California Institute of Technology; Ayyalusamy Ramamoorthy, University of Michigan; Andrew Routh, UT Medical Branch Galveston; Joan-Emma Shea, UC Santa Barbara; Yizhi Tao, Rice University; Adam Zlotnick, Indiana University. Symposium website
Research Mentor Training Workshop for Postdocs, May 2
This important workshop is designed to help postdocs develop skills and insight in mentoring young scientists and to provide the opportunity for interactions between mentors at different institutions and in different disciplines. Time: 9:30 am - 3:00 pm; lunch will be provided. Location: BioScience Research Collaborative, Event Hall, 6500 Main Street. Spaces are limited. Registration deadline: April 23.
NMR and Cell Tracking Symposium, May 16
Confirmed speakers include Eric Ahrens, UCSD; Craig Malloy, UTSW; Naomi Halas, Rice University; Matthew Allen, Wayne State University; Vidya Gopalakrishnan, MD Anderson; Vikas Jundra, MD Anderson. Additionally, local speakers will discuss current NMR methods and highlight existing resources and technologies available in GCC institutions. Sponsored by the GCC Consortium for Magnetic Resonance. BioScience Research Collaborative, 6500 Main St, 8:30 am to 5 pm. Registration
1st Annual GCC Mental Health Research Symposium, May 18
Confirmed speakers include Ronald Duman, Yale University; Mary Kay Lobo, University of Maryland School of Medicine; and Susan Koester, NIMH. Sponsored by the GCC Cluster for Mental Health Research. BioScience Research Collaborative, 6500 Main St. Registration
Reproducible Research (RR) with R and RStudio Workshop, June 6, 10 am -2:30 pm
First in the series of the GCC Rigor and Reproducibility (RR) Program targeted modules, this workshop will: 1) discuss examples motivating the shift to RR; 2) survey the simple nature of the most common problems; 3) discuss organizing data as projects; 4) use Rstudio, knitr, and rmarkdown to illustrate the use of literate programming to interleave text describing the analyses with the code producing the results; 5) use Rstudio, devtools, and roxygen2 to construct a basic R package; 6) survey other commonly used tools and give pointers to how they might be used and where to learn more. This course will take place from presumes some working knowledge of R. Attendees are requested to bring laptops with recent versions of R and Rstudio installed, as well as the R packages knitr, rmarkdown, devtools, roxygen2, and RTools (this last is for Windows PCs; it’s required to compile R packages). BioScience Research Collaborative, Room 1003, 6500 Main St Limited to the first 30 registrants. Registration
Scientific Data Integrity Workshop, June 13, 10 am -2:30 pm
Second in the series of the GCC Rigor and Reproducibility (RR) Program targeted modules, this workshop is designed to cover fundamental elements necessary to help assure the quality and integrity of data derived from research studies. The workshop will review best practices for documentation of research activities, data capture, data (and document) management, and introduce risk mitigation strategies to enhance study reproducibility. A combination of mini lectures, case studies, and group exercises will comprise the activities. Knowledge gained will allow attendees to implement lessons learned within their research environment as elements of a quality system or internal to an individual research project. BioScience Research Collaborative, Room 1003, 6500 Main St Limited to the first 50 registrants. Registration
Save the Date: 28th Annual Keck Research Conference, October 26, 2018
This annual conference highlights emerging areas of quantitative biomedical science important to our community and provides an opportunity to showcase, via poster session, the diverse research of trainees affiliated with GCC/Keck Center training programs and other institutional programs. This year, the conference focus is on Data Science and Machine Learning for Biomedicine. Confirmed speakers include Payel Das, technical lead, AI Solutions, IBM Watson Research Center; and Christopher Re, associate professor, computer science, Stanford University. Organizers are Jim Briggs, Univ of Houston, Lydia Kavraki, Rice University (chair), and Chris Jermaine, Rice University. The conference will be at the BioScience Research Collaborative, 6500 Main St. More information, including details about submitting a logo for the conference logo contest, will be available soon on the conference website.