Data Science Insitute
Center for Computational Molecular Biology
SorinFest
Phase Transitions in Computer Science and Computational Biology
SorinFest
Phase Transitions in Computer Science and Computational Biology
Distinguished Lectures
Opening Keynote: A John von Neumann Distinguished Lecture
Craig Venter, CEO of Celera Genomics and the J. Craig Venter Institute; winner of the National Medal of Science
Introduction by
Michael Waterman, Professor of Biology, Mathematics and Computer Science, emeritus; Endowed Associates Chair in Biological Sciences, Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Southern California
Keynote: A John von Neumann Distinguished Lecture
Bonnie Berger, Simons Professor of Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Introduction by
Ritambhara Singh, Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Center for Computational Molecular Biology, Brown University
Keynote
Andy Clark, Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Population Genetics, Cornell University; Brown University alumnus
Introduction by
Sohini Ramachandran, Hermon C. Bumpus Professor of Biology; Professor of Computer Science; and Director of the Data Science Institute
Keynote: A John von Neumann Distinguished Lecture
Ken Dill, Laufer Family Endowed Chair in Physical Biology and SUNY Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Physics; Director of the Louis and Beatrice Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology, Stony Brook University
Introduction by
Brenda Rubenstein, Associate Professor of Chemistry, Brown University
Keynote: A John von Neumann Distinguished Lecture (on Zoom)
Misha Gromov, Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques and New York University; winner of the Abel Prize
Introduction by
Stuart Geman, James Manning Professor of Applied Mathematics, Brown University
Keynote
Gene Myers, Director of the Max Planck Insitute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Emeritus; former VP of Informatics Research, Celera Genomics
Introduction by
Bjarni Halldorsson, deCode Genetics; Biomedical Engineering, Reykjavík University
Keynote: An Ising-Onsager Distinguished Lecture
J. Michael Kosterlitz, Harrison E. Farnsworth Professor of Physics, Brown University; winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics
Introductions by
Lai-Sheng Wang, Chair of the Chemistry Department, Brown University
Bill Camp, Sandia National Laboratories and Intel, Emeritus
Thomas Ising, Ernst Ising's son
Richard Stratt, Newport Rogers Professor of Chemistry; Professor of Physics, Brown University
Professor Kosterlitz’s lecture will also serve as the inaugural lecture in Brown University’s new Ising-Onsager Distinguished Lecture Series. His research areas include condensed matter, phase transitions, and Ising spin glasses. The initial proposal for this lecture series (“Proposal for the Ernst Ising Distinguished Lecture Series”) was made to Brown University’s Dean of the Faculty on May 20, 2011, by Sorin and colleagues from the Departments of Chemistry and Physics. The Ising-Onsager Distinguished Lecture Series builds on and revises that proposal.
This series honors the memory of Lars Onsager, Brown University Professor of Chemistry from 1928-1933 and winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1968. In 1944, Onsager obtained the phase transition and exact solution for the 2D planar Ising Model (Ising ferromagnetic 2D plane grid). His seminal exact mathematical proof of the 2D planar Ising model partition function formula is considered one of the most extraordinary mathematical tour de force proofs in statistical physics. Answering the call to “make [the proof] human”, a dream team of mathematicians and physicists, including Katz, Ward, Feynman, Hurst, Kasteleyn, and Temperley attempted until 1975 to generalize Onsager’s proof to three dimensions, but without success. Kac and Ward, with contributions from Feynman, obtained a combinatorial proof of the Onsager theorem. In 2000, Sorin published the paper "Statistical Mechanics, Three-Dimensionality and NP-completeness. I. Universality of Intractability for the Partition Function of the Ising Model Across Non-Planar Lattices" at the Symposium on the Theory of Computing (STOC). His paper showed, for several Ising spin glass models, that for every non-planar (and therefore every 3D) model, computing the partition function is NP-complete. The proofs were axiomatic: Non-planarity plus Translational Invariance implies NP-completeness.
Friday, October 6
9:00 am
Registration and Continental Breakfast
10:30 am
Opening Remarks
Roberto Tamassia, James A. and Julie N. Brown Professor and Chair of the Computer Science Department, Brown University
Sohini Ramachandran, Hermon C. Bumpus Professor of Biology; Professor of Computer Science; and Director of the Data Science Institute, Brown University
10:40 am
Keynote: A John von Neumann Distinguished Lecture
Craig Venter, CEO of Celera Genomics and the J. Craig Venter Institute; Winner of the National Medal of Science
Introduction by Michael Waterman, Professor of Biology, Mathematics and Computer Science, emeritus; Endowed Associates Chair in Biological Sciences, Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Southern California
11:30 am
Sweatbox Session with Craig Venter
11:55 am
Keynote: A John von Neumann Distinguished Lecture
"21st Century Genomics: Minimizer-Space Computation"
Bonnie Berger, Simons Professor of Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Introduction by Ritambhara Singh, Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Data Science, Brown University
12:25 pm
Audience Q&A Session
12:35 pm
Lunch Buffet
1:15 pm
Presentation by
Provost Francis J. Doyle
1:55 pm
Keynote: Ernst Ising-Lars Onsager Distinguished Lecture
"Topological Defect Driven Phase Transitions in Two Dimensions: An Exact Result from an Approximate Theory
Michael Kosterlitz, Harrison E. Farnsworth Professor of Physics, Brown University
Introductory Remarks on Lars Onsager by Lai-Sheng Wang, Chair of the Chemistry Department, Brown University
Introductory Remarks on Ernst Ising by Thomas Ising, Ernst Ising's son
Introductions by Richard Stratt, Newport Rogers Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Physics, Brown University; and Bill Camp, Sandia National Laboratories and Intel, emeritus
2:45 pm
Sweatbox Session with Michael Kosterlitz
3:05 pm
"Never Make a Calculation Unless You Know the Answer"
Bill Camp, Director of Supercomputing, emeritus, Sandia National Laboratories; Director of the Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Administration's Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative; Head of Development for the world's first teraflop computer; Chief Supercomputing Architect, emeritus, Intel; Winner of the IEEE Seymour Cray Supercomputing Award
3:25 pm
Henri Luchian, Vice-Rector for International Relations and Professor of Computer Science, the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Romania
3:40 pm
Andrea Califano, Clyde and Helen Wu Professor of Chemical and Systems Biology, Columbia University
3:55 pm
"Socio-Economic Gradients of Development in Pathways of Aging"
Caleb "Tuck" Finch, University Professor and ARCO/William F. Kieschnick Chair in the Neurobiology of Aging, University of Southern California
4:15 pm
Keynote: A Jon von Neumann Distinguished Lecture
"Allele-Specific Expression as a Pairwise Contest"
Andy Clark, Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Population Genetics, Cornell University; Brown University alumnus
Introduction by Sohini Ramachandran, Hermon C. Bumpus Professor of Biology; Professor of Computer Science; and Director of the Data Science Institute, Brown University
4:45 pm
Audience Q&A Session
4:55 pm
"Discovery: How, If Not AI?"
Laxmi Parida, IBM Master Inventor and Group Leader in Computational Genetics at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center and Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University
5:10 pm
"The Origin of Sorin's Computational Biology Research"
Ernie Brickell, Chief Security Architect, emeritus, Intel; Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff, Sandia National Laboratories; Fellow of the International Association for Cryptologic Research
Bill Hart, Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff, Sandia National Laboratories
5:25 pm
Franco Preparata, An Wang Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, Brown University, Visionary Founder of CCMB
5:30 pm
Conference Dinner at the Hope Club (by invitation only)
Dinner at the Hope Club
Friday, October 6, 2023
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Saturday, October 7
8:30 am
Continental Breakfast
9:00 am
Opening Remarks
Daniel Weinreich, Royce Family Professor of Teaching Excellence in Biology; Professor of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology; Director of the Center for Computational Molecular Biology
9:10 am
Keynote: A Jon von Neumann Distinguished Lecture
Misha Gromov, Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques and New York University; Winner of the Abel Prize
Introduction by Stuart Geman, James Manning Professor of Applied Mathematics, Brown University
10:00 am
Sweatbox Session with Misha Gromov
10:20 am
Refreshment Break
10:40 am
"Transmission, Mutation, and Fitness Networks of Online Content: An Unexpected Role for Mechanisms in Computational Biology"
John Kleinberg, Tisch University Professor of Computer Science and Information Science, Cornell University
10:55 am
"Algorithms for Multinomic Disease Data"
Ron Shamir, Sackler Professor of Bioinformatics, Tel Aviv University
11:05 am
"How To Be An Ethical Computer Scientist"
Moshe Vardi (on Zoom), University Professor and Karen Ostrum George Distinguished Service Professor in Computational Engineering, Rice University
11:15 am
"The Motzkin and Fredkin Quantum Spin Chains"
Peter Shor, Morrs Professor of Applied Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Winner of the Gödel Prize and a MacArthur Fellowship
11:30 am
"C++: Evolving a Useful Language"
Bjarne Stroustrup, Professor of Computer Science, Columbia University; Inventor of the C++ programming language; Winner of the Faraday Medal
11:50 am
Keynote: A John von Neumann Distinguished Lecture
"The Molecular Origins of Life: The Protein Folding Problem All Over Again?"
Ken Dill, Laufer Family Endowed Chair in Physical Biology; SUNY Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Physics; Director of the Louis and Beatrice Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology, Stony Brook University
Introduction by Brenda Rubenstein, Associate Professor of Chemistry, Brown University
12:20 pm
Audience Q&A Session
12:30 pm
Lunch Buffet
1:15 pm
Keynote: A John von Neumann Distinguished Lecture
"Sorting for Speed in Bioinformatics"
Gene Myers, Director of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, emeritus; Former VP of Informatics Research, Celera Genomics
Introduction by Vineet Bafna, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, University of California San Diego
1:45 pm
Audience Q&A Session
1:55 pm
"From Ulam's Problem to Sequence Alignment in the Telomere-to-Telemore Era"
Pavel Pevzner, Ronald R. Taylor Chair and Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, University of California San Diego
2:10 pm
Liliana Florea, Associate Professor of Genetic Medicine, Johns Hopkins University
2:25 pm
Guiseppe Lancia, Full Professor of Operations Research, University of Udine
2:40 pm
Refreshment Break
3:00 pm
"Prioritizing non-coding mutations in evolution and in cancer"
Sridhar Hannenhalli, Head, Cancer Gene Regulation Section, National Cancer Institute
3:15 pm
"Whither the MCH I Immunopeptidome?"
Jon Yewdell, Chief, Cellular Biology Section, Laboratory of Viral Diseases, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health
3:30 pm
Jason Miller, Associate Professor of Computer Science, Shepherd University
3:45 pm
Dan Fasulo, Founder and President, Pattern Genetics
4:00 pm
Student Presentations
4:30 pm
Closing Remarks
Sorin Istrail, James A. and Julie N. Brown Professor of Computational and Mathematical Sciences, and Former Director of the Center for Computational Molecular Biology, Brown University; Former Senior Director and Head of Informatics Research, Celera Genomics; Founder, Computational Biology Project, Sandia National Laboratories; Co-Editor in Chief, Journal of Computational Biology; Co-Founder, Annual International Conference on Research on Computational Biology (RECOMB); Co-Editor in Chief, MIT Press Computational Molecular Biology Series; Professor Honoris Causa, the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Romania
5:00 pm
Open Mic Reception
5:30 pm
Sorin's Birthday Dinner at the Brown University Faculty Club (by invitation only)
Dinner at the Faculty Club
Friday, October 7
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A talk by Sorin will close the event. His remarks will include an In Memoriam section with remembrances of beloved mentors, friends, and heroes:
Paul Erdos (at Sandia National Laboratories)
Edsger Dijkstra (in Rhode Island)
John Conway (at Sandia National Laboratories, Brown University, and Romania)
Alberto Apostolico (at Brown University, Venice, Lipari, and Ischia)
Eric Davidson (at California Institute of Technology and Brown University)
Solomon Marcus (at Brown University, Cambridge, UK, and Romania)
Ken Arrow (at Brown University and Romania)
Julie Nguyen Brown
Robert Zimmer (at Brown University)
Calin Ignat
Sergiu Runeanu
and Ernst Ising, Lars Onsager, and John von Neumann
Organizing Committee
Bjarni V. Halldórsson, Chair of the Organizing Committee; Head of Sequence Analysis, deCODE Genetics; Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Reykjavík University
Derek Aguiar, Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Connecticut
Suzanne Alden, Grants and Financial Manager, Department of Computer Science, Brown University
Vineet Bafna, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, University of California San Diego
Meghan Lopes Meenan, Events and Outreach Coordinator, Center for Computational Molecular Biology and Data Science Institute, Brown University
Russell Schwartz, Professor and Head, Computational Biology Department, Carnegie Mellon University