Jillian F. Banfield is Professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Science, as well as the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, both at UC Berkeley. She received her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1990. Prior to joining UC Berkeley in 2001, Banfield was on the faculty of University of Wisconsin-Madison, and held a professorship at the Mineralogical Institute of Tokyo University. Her research areas include mineralogy, environmental geochemistry, geomicrobiology and nanogeoscience. Banfield studies interactions between microorganisms and minerals, especially the impact of microorganisms on mineral weathering and crystal growth, biomineralization and geochemical cycling. [Abstract] [video] Doug Bartlett is Professor of Marine Microbial Genetics in UCSD's Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Chicago in molecular biology. Bartlett's research interests include: adaptation of deep-sea microbes to high pressure and low temperature; functional genomics of selected marine microbes; virulence determinants in vibrios; environmental adaptation of vibrios; and detection of pathogens in the marine environment. [video] Edward F. DeLong is Professor in the Division of Biological Engineering & Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT. He received his Ph.D. in marine biology in 1986. DeLong and his lab focuses on devising and applying new approaches to describe, quantify and model the complexity of natural microbial assemblages, in particular bacteria and archaea, and understanding its natural significance and applied potential. His lab is currently engaged in applying contemporary genomic technologies to dissect complex microbial assemblages, with a central focus on marine systems. [Abstract] [video] [pdf] W. Ford Doolittle is Professor of biochemistry at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1967. Doolittle's research focuses on the evolution of genes and genomes, using standard methods of molecular genetics and sophisticated computer algorithms to reconstruct phylogenies from gene sequences and to understand genome evolution as a process. Recently his research has also focused on questions and methods in environmental microbiology, looking at gene transfer in natural systems. [Abstract] [video] Jonathan A. Eisen is Professor in the Genome Center of UC Davis, with joint appointments in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology in the School of Medicine and in the Section of Evolution and Ecology in the School of Biological Sciences. Eisen received his Ph.D. from Stanford University, and subsequently was a researcher in microbial genomics at The Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, MD. His research interests are in the fields of DNA repair, extremophiles, microbial evolution, genome evolution and phylogenomics. [Abstract] [video] Jed Fuhrman holds the McCulloch-Crosby Chair in Marine Biology and is Professor of Biology at the University of Southern California. He earned his Ph.D. in 1981 from UCSD's Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Professor Fuhrman researches the roles of microorganisms in natural marine ecosystems and the cycling of matter in the ocean, from the microscopic scale to the global scale. He is currently exploring global marine microbial biodiversity with molecular biological techniques, which has enabled him to identify new species and make better estimates of the total diversity found in these communities. [ppt] Paul Gilna is Executive Director of the Community Cyberinfrastructure for Advanced Marine Microbial Ecology Research and Analysis (CAMERA) project, a joint venture of UCSD and J. Craig Venter Institute, based in the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology. Previously, he directed the Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute operations at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Before JGI, as program director for Computational Biology and Database Activity Programs at NSF, Gilna oversaw the transition of management of the Protein Data Bank from Brookhaven National Laboratory to the Rutgers/UCSD/San Diego Supercomputer Center consortium. Gilna was also co-PI of Los Alamos’ GenBank project. [Abstract] [video] [ppt] Frank Oliver Glöckner is Head of Microbial Genomics Group at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany, where he received his Ph.D. in 1998. He is also an associate professor of bioinformatics at International University Bremen. His research focus is on the study of marine bacteria using whole-genome analysis and functional genomics, and the potential of those methods to reveal mechanisms coded in the genome that enable the bacteria to adapt to changing environmental conditions. In 2005 Glöckner co-founded Ribocon, a spinoff of MPI Bremen, focused on knowledge transfer and product development in the field of molecular microbial diagnostics. [Abstract] [video] Jeffrey I. Gordon, M.D., is the first holder of the Dr. Robert J. Glaser Distinguished University Professorship at Washington University of St. Louis. He received his M.D. from the University of Chicago, and joined the Washington University faculty in l981 after completing his clinical training in internal medicine and gastroenterology and serving as a research associate in the Laboratory of Biochemistry at the National Cancer Institute. Gordon is known for his research on gastrointestinal development and how intestinal bacteria affect intestinal function, and is currently Director of the Center for Genome Sciences at Washington University. [Abstract] [video] Jo Handelsman is Professor of Plant Pathology at University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she received her Ph.D. in molecular biology. From 1997 to ‘99, she was Director of the Institute for Pest and Pathogen Management at UW–Madison. In her research, Handelsman studies communication networks of microbial communities, and focuses on understanding the structure and function of those communities, while aiming to develop new technologies to enhance plant health and discovery of new medicinal and agricultural chemistry. Her lab's research on Bacillus cereus led to the discovery of zwittermicin A, an antibiotic of diverse activities, including inhibition of oomycete pathogens of plants and potentiation of the activity of an insecticidal toxin. Handelsman’s lab uses metagenomics to access the chemistry of uncultured bacteria by analyzing the collective genomes of uncultured organisms. [Abstract] [video] [pdf] Victor Markowitz is in the Biological Data Management and Technology Center, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL). He received his D.Sc. degree in computer science from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. In 2003, he returned to LBNL after six years at Gene Logic, where he was Chief Information Officer and Senior Vice President, Data Management Systems. Before joining Gene Logic in 1997, he worked for 10 years at LBNL, mostly on developing data management tools for biological databases. He led the development of the Object Protocol Model (OPM) data management and integration tools that have been used for developing public and commercial genome databases. [Abstract] [video] Francisco Rodriguez-Valera is Professor of Microbiology at the Universidad Miguel Hernández in Alicante, Spain. His research uses metagenomics as the strategy to study marine and coastal hypersaline environments, and notably bacterial diversity. His lab combines the use of molecular identity markers such as the ribosomal RNA gene amplified by PCR techniques from natural samples, with new techniques to retrieve in culture novel organisms with potential in biotechnology. Rodriquez-Valera also studies evolutionary or population microbiology. [Abstract] [video] [ppt] Larry Smarr is founding Director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) and Harry E. Gruber Professor of Computer Science and Information Technologies in UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering. Prior to joining UCSD in 2000, he was the founder and 15-year director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He earned a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1975. Smarr played a pivotal role in the development of the Internet and high-performance computing, and is a pioneer in prototyping a national information infrastructure to support academic research, governmental functions, and industrial competitiveness. [Abstract] [video] [ppt] John C. Wooley is Associate Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of California San Diego, where he is affiliated with Calit2 and Senior Fellow at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, with adjunct professorships in Pharmacology, and in Chemistry and Biochemistry. He received his Ph.D. degree in 1975 from the University of Chicago. Wooley created the first programs within the U.S. federal government for funding research in bioinformatics and in computational biology. His research involves bioinformatics and structural genomics, and focuses on structure-function relationships in protein-nuclei acid complexes and the architecture of chromatin and ribonucleoproteins. [video] Contact: Kayo Arima (858) 822-4649 karima@ucsd.edu