QBI presents a seminar with Liliana Brown, Director of the Office of Genomics and Advanced Technologies at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

Dr. Brown has experience in omics of infectious diseases and computational biology through her academic career at Trinity DC University and research at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI). Prior to joining NIAID, Dr. Brown was Associate Director of Scientific Affairs at the Society for Women’s Health Research, a non-profit advocacy group in Washington, DC. Dr. Brown received her PhD in Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of Maryland College Park. 

Talk Title: 20 Years of Innovative Omics Technologies for Infectious Disease Research at NIAID

The Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (DMID), part of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) has continuously expanded its genome-scale initiatives since 2003 by establishing comprehensive centers and collaborative research programs to provide the scientific community with critical genomic and other -omics data sets, reagents, and research resources to conduct basic and applied infectious diseases research. Dr. Brown will present an overview of these various large-scale omics centers and programs which include: the Genomic Centers for Infectious Diseases (GCID) that apply and develop innovative sequencing technologies for high-throughput pathogen and host genomics studies; the Centers for Research in Structural Biology for Infectious Diseases (CRSTAL-ID) that provide determination of 3D protein and protein-ligand structures; the Systems Biology for Infectious Diseases Program, that use multiple types of large-scale data collections for computational modeling of host-pathogen interactions; and the Bioinformatics Resource Centers (BRC) that provide computational platforms to access integrated multi-omics data sets and bioinformatics analysis tools. This investment has revolutionized how scientists study infectious diseases by applying cutting-edge technologies to a wide variety of biological questions related to pathogen evolution, fitness, virulence, and interactions with its host and microbiome towards development of novel therapeutics, diagnostics, and vaccines.

Host: Nevan Krogan