VISUALIZING BIOLOGICAL DATA VIZBI

Thursday next week at VIZBI 2018, in his keynote talk on communicating science visually, Drew Berry from Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (Victoria, Australia) will present the latest experiments from WEHI.TV: GPU hardware and accelerated game engines to generate detailed cinematic landscapes inside our living cells. This work has expanded to deliver real-time open-world stories of mitochrondrial membranes and animated molecular engines. Further details about Drew’s talk are available at https://vizbi.org/Talks/2018/Drew_Berry

Where to go when in Cambridge, MA? (1) Visit the Entrepreneur Walk of Fame in Kendall Square: the plaza outside the Marriott hotel has tiles honoring Thomas Edison, Hewlett-Packard Co-founders Bill Hewlett and David Packard, Genentech Cofounder Bob Swanson, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Lotus founder Mitch Kapor. (2) When you arrive at the Broad, grab a screenshot of your WiFi neighbourhood and share with your friends: you’re in one of the world’s greatest technology hubs! (3) A stone’s throw from the Broad is the main office of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and just a few blocks away is the main office of Cell Press, both are worth the visit. (5) A favorite local restaurant chain is called Legal Seafoods; one is located a block away from Broad; another is in Boston Logan airport. On departure day, get to the airport early so you can get in a last lobster or Boston clam chowder before flying home.

Thursday morning next week at VIZBI 2018, as part of the session on visualising protein data, Ivan Viola from the Technische Universität Wien (Austria) will talk on the large-scale interactive visualization of protein environments. His work uses a variety of computer graphics and visualization techniques to enable interactive navigation through molecular-scale models of entire viruses or bacteria. In coming years, he aims to scale-up these methods to encompass entire eukaryotic cells, or to allow real-time physiological simulations covering the entire lifetime of simple bacteria. Further details about Ivan’s talk – including a much higher resolution version of the image below and a short video – are available at https://vizbi.org/Talks/2018/Ivan_Viola.

In the week following VIZBI 2018, some of the VIZBI team travel to the New York Genome Center to present a ‘VIZBI Showcase‘. Formerly known as VizbiPlus events, these are evening events designed to highlight the use of visualisation to communicate biological insight and discovery. The VIZBI Showcase will be on Monday, April 2, run by local host Christian Stolte, and featuring a keynote from renowned biomedical animator Gaël McGill (Harvard Medical School & Digizyme). This will be followed by short ‘lightning’ talks from local participants whose work spans life science and visual communication. It’s the perfect event to bring friends and family, and share with them the fascinating and exciting world of life science research.

The following day, April 3, there will be a smaller version of the Data Visualization Masterclass event, given New Yorkers the opportunity to learn in-depth approaches, techniques, and design issues for visualising complex data.

The tissues and organisms session at VIZBI 2018 will be chaired by Steve Pieper (Harvard University). In this session, Richard Smith (Max Planck Institute for Plant Genetics, Germany) will speak on visualizing morphogenesis data, Lydia Gregg (Johns Hopkins University) on advances and challenges in visualizing human anatomy, and James Michaelson (Massachusetts General Hospital) will discuss micro-CT data.

The cellular systems session at VIZBI 2018 will be chaired by John Bachman (Harvard University, USA). In this session, Bree Aldridge (Tufts University, USA) will speak about visualizing cellular responses, Devin Sullivan (KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden) on protein localization data, and Scooter Morris (UCSF, USA) will discuss tools and approaches for representing biological networks.

The protein session at VIZBI 2018 will be chaired by Gaël McGill (Harvard Medical School & Digizyme, USA). In this session, Ivan Viola (Technische Universität Wien, Austria) will discuss large scale interactive visualization of protein environments, Jodie Jenkinson (University of Toronto, Canada) will speak about molecular representations, and Sameer Velankar (PDBe, UK) will highlight the importance of visualization in databases of molecular structure.

The RNA session at VIZBI 2018 will be chaired by Yoseph Barash (University of Pennsylvania). In this session, Joanna Trylska (University of Warsaw, Poland) will discuss RNA structure and dynamics, Eric Lécuyer (Clinical Research Institute of Montreal, Canada) will speak about high-throughput molecular imaging, and Kristin Ardlie (Broad Institute) on RNA expression.