The Inaugural Gary D. Stormo Computational & Systems Biology Lectureship was hosted at the Department of Genetics on October 3rd, 2024 with Dr. Michael Brent delivering a talk titled “Mapping and modeling transcriptional regulatory networks”. Dr. Michael Brent is the Henry Edwin Sever Professor of Engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering of Washington University whose work focuses on computational and molecular methods for mapping and modeling gene regulation networks.
The Gary D. Stormo Computational & Systems Biology Lectureship was established by the Department of Genetics in honor of Dr. Gary D. Stormo, a pioneer in bioinformatics with 24 years of professorship at Washington University School of Medicine. “Dr. Gary Stormo has been at the forefront of efforts to apply information and probability theory to the analysis of DNA, RNA and protein sequences. It is not an exaggeration to say that Gary is one of the four or five people who founded a field – Computational Molecular Biology – that now permeates all of biological research.” says Dr. Ting Wang, the Chair of the Department of Genetics.
At the lecture, Dr. Michael Brent announced the first recipient of the Gary D. Stormo Computational & Systems Biology Fellowship, Reilly Alex Sample. Reilly Alex Sample is a 4th-year Molecular Genetics and Genomics (MGG) student co-mentored by Dr. Rob Mitra and Dr. Sid Puram. The Gary D. Stormo Computational & Systems Biology Fellowship recognizes individuals with outstanding potential to contribute to Genetics research with a special focus on those engaged in Computational Systems Biology. The program supports recipients for two years, providing a $5,000 increase above the base student stipend, as well as a supply and travel budget to facilitate the student’s research and enhance their networking and career development.