Dr. Verma is Chief of the Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program\'s (EGRP) Methods and Technologies Branch (MTB), and oversees its research portfolio and initiatives that focus on methods to address epidemiologic data collection, study design and analysis, and to modify technological approaches developed in the context of other research endeavors for use as biomarkers and methods to understand cancer susceptibility. He is responsible for stimulating EGRP-funded research on epigenetic approaches in cancer epidemiology and has been instrumental in developing epigenetics research for NIH as a whole. Dr. Verma helped to develop a Request for Applications (RFA) on Environmental Influences on Epigenetics with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and represents the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences (DCCPS), in NIH\'s Roadmap Initiative on Epigenetics. He helped develop an RFA on Comparative Systems Genetics of Cancer with NCI\'s Division of Cancer Biology (DCB), and is known within the extramural research community as an EGRP Program Director for Program Announcements (PAs) on Small Grants for Cancer Epidemiology and Pilot Studies in Pancreatic Cancer. He also organized a workshop to explore developing a concept for a research initiative on mitochondrial DNA and cancer epidemiology. Dr. Verma was, and continues to be, a co-Program Director for initiatives in gene-environment interactions in cancer etiology, including the Breast and Prostate Cancer and Hormone-Related Variants Cohort Consortium (BPC3), which is a collaborative project to pool data and biospecimens from a group of large prospective cancer epidemiology cohorts. Dr. Verma joined EGRP as a Program Director in 2004. In 2005, he was appointed Acting Chief of EGRP\'s former Analytic Epidemiology Research Branch (AERB). When EGRP reorganized in 2007, he was appointed Acting Chief of MTB and of the Host Susceptibility Factors Branch (HSFB), for which he served as Acting Chief through 2008. Before joining EGRP, he was a Program Director in NCI\'s Division of Cancer Prevention (DCP), where he worked in the areas of biomarkers, early detection, risk assessment, and prevention. He also was Coordinator of DCP\'s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Programs. He was on the faculty in the Biochemistry Department of Georgetown University before joining NIH.

Biomarkers, epigenetics, epidemiology technologies, proteomics, microRNA, methylation, mitochondria, nanotechnology, risk assessment, susceptibility factors, and systems genetics

Momiao Xiong completed his Ph. D in 1993 and postdoctoral studies from University of Southern California. He is a Professor in the Division of Biostatistics and Human Genetics Center at the University of Texas School of Public Health. He has published more than 100 papers and served as editorial board member for a number of Journals.

Statistical Genetics and Genetic Epidemiology;
Integrated Analysis of Genetics and Epigenetics;
Population Genetics;
Computational Systems Biology;
Hign Dimensional Data Reduction and Functional Data Analysis

Dr. Bolshoy is an Associated Professor in the Department of Evolutionary and Environmental Biology, and a member of the Institute of Evolution at the University of Haifa, Israel. He completed his PhD from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Computational Structural Biology in 1993. Dr. Bolshoy has been a major player in the field of DNA Linguistics and in the field of DNA curvature and bendability since the 1990-ies. He is the author of the books and many scientific articles.

 Bioinformatics Expertise: DNA structure, multiple sequence alignment algorithms, sequence repetitiveness, sequence complexity, pattern recognition, non-linear regression, heuristic methods of optimization. During the last years my work tries to shed light on one of the big questions in comparative genomics: what are the factors affecting gene length, and whether variations in gene length are dependent on organismal evolution. Currently we know that some genes become longer than their predecessors while other genes become shorter; however, whether the sizes of these factions vary randomly in each organism or follow certain tendency remains an open question.

Dr. Brocchieri is Assistant Professor at the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, and Genetics Institute, University of Florida. He has received his A.B. in Biology with a dissertation on the evolution of animal behavior, and his Ph.D. in Environmental Studies, with a dissertation in Theoretical Population Genetics on the evolution of altruistic behavior, at the University of Parma, Italy. He was Postdoctoral fellow, Research Associate, and Senior Research Associate at the Department of Mathematics, Stanford University, from 1991 to 2006, where he worked with Prof. Sam Karlin on bioinformatics and molecular evolution. Dr. Brocchieri is the author of more than 30 peer reviewed scientific articles, 3 book chapters, and software for protein multiple sequence alignment (ITERALIGN) and for gene identification (N-PACT).

Dr. Brocchieri’s main research interests are in the development of mathematical models for the characterization of patterns of protein evolution and phylogenetic methods, in studying the evolution of eukaryotic developmental genes, in adaptive processes in the human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and in computational methods for gene identification.

Nadereh Jafari directs the Genomics Core Facility, which supports both Northwestern and external investigators by providing traditional and next generation sequencing, genotyping, and gene expression profiling services, as well as many others. She previously served as the director of the Microarray Core Facility, which merged with the Genotyping Core in 2006 to form the current facility. Jafari received her doctorate in laboratory medicine from Shiraz University in Iran, then completed a postdoctoral fellowship and received a master\\\'s degree in biotechnology from Johns Hopkins University.

Biotechnology

George G Chen is a professor in the Department of Surgery, Director of Surgical Research Laboratories, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China. He is also served as a principle investigator at the Hong Kong Cancer Institute. He has extensive experience in cancer research, particularly in the area of apoptosis in hepatocellular carcinoma, lung caner and thyroid cancer. He has authored or co-authored ~120 papers and has written a number of books or book chapters. He is currently a member of editorial boards or a guest editor of a number of scientific journals and a regular peer-reviewer for several grant agents. He was educated in China and United Kingdom and has MB and PhD degrees.

Surgical Research

Y. Kartavtsev has completed his Ph.D. in 1978 at the Institute of General Genetics, RAS (Moscow) and 2nd S.D. degree at the age of 45 years from S. Petersburg University. He served 7 years as the director of Vostok Marine Biological Station (Institute of Marine Biology, FEB RAS, Vladivostok, Russia). Currently he is the head of Lab of Molecular Systematics. He has published more than 60 papers in reputed journals, has several, reviews, monographs & textbooks and serving as an editorial board member of repute. Publically is active as the chairman of Vladivostok Public Foundation for Development of Genetics and RUS-BOL.

Population, Evolutionary & Ecological Genetics, Evolutionary Genomics, Conservation Genetics, Phylogenetics, Genetic Basis of Heterosis, Genetics of Quantitative Traits, Genetics of Reproduction and Animal Stock Rehabilitation.

Dr Zhou is presently a Professor of Pharmacology and Molecular Medicine, Associate Vice President of Global Medical Development, Associate Dean of International Research, and Chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Colleges of Pharmacy and Medicine, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida. Professor Zhou completed his clinical medical training in China in 1989 and obtained his PhD in 2001 from the School of Medicine, the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Since 2002, After 2 years’ postdoctoral training in the University of Auckland, Dr Zhou has served as an Assistant Professor, Senior Lecturer, Associate Professor and Professor for the National University of Singapore, Queensland University of Technology (Australia), and RMIT University (Australia). Dr Zhou’s major research interests are systems pharmacology, drug metabolism & drug transport, pharmacokinetics & pharmacometrics, pharmacogenomics, nanomedicine and Chinese medicines. He is currently affiliated with the WHO Collaborating Center for Traditional Medicine. Professor Zhou has published more than 320 peer-reviewed papers in various pharmacology and medical journals including New England Journal of Medicine, Cancer Research, Journal of Biological Chemistry, Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, and Clinical Cancer Research. He has also published 16 books and book chapters and more than 250 conference abstracts. Dr Zhou serves as an editor-in-chief or editor for Drug, Healthcare and Patient Safety, Clinical Pharmacology & Biopharmaceutics, Journal of Pharmacogenomics and Pharmacoproteomics, Drug Metabolism Letters, WMC (WebmedCentral) plus Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Current Drug Metabolism and is the editorial board member of 25 medical and pharmacological journals.

Nanomedicine, drug discovery, drug metabolism, drug transport, pharmacogenomics, Chinese medicine/herbal medicines, and stem cells.

William Reinhold is currently operating as facility head of the Genomics and Bioinformatics Group in the Laboratory of Molecular Pharmacology. He has been a part of this section since April 1998, working with John N. Weinstein, and then Yves Pommier. He has been central in generating multiple datasets for the NCI-60 cancerous cell lines, available at the CellMiner web-application at http://discover.nci.nih.gov/cellminer/. His activities include running the web site, the dissemination and interpretation of this data, and encouraging and facilitating collaborations. He received his B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Maryland in 1978, and currently has 67 peer-reviewed publications.

Currently our research includes the collection of data for the NCI-60 cancerous cell lines, and the development of software to facilitate the use of this data in systems pharmacology. We currently provide easy integration for 20, 602 compounds (including 102 FDA-approved drugs, and 53 in clinical trial), 26,065 genes, and 350 microRNAs.