Faculty & Staff Notes Archives: Summer 2002

Week of August 26, 2002
Richard Salter, professor of computer science, and Robin Treichel, associate professor of biology, recently attended the Bioinformatics Workshop for Educators sponsored by the National Science Foundation and hosted by the Rochester Institute of Technology. Bioinformatics is a new scientific discipline that blends biology and computer science. Generally, computers are used to organize, link, analyze, and visualize complex sets of biological data. A good example is the use of bioinformatics to decipher the information embedded in the recently completed sequence of the human genome. Common applications include molecular modeling, molecular visualization, and rational drug design. At the workshop, 28 biologists and computer scientists from all over the country received cross training in bioinformatics. During the first half of the workshop, biologists got a crash course in computer science while the computer scientists got a crash course in molecular genetics. During the second half, the two groups met together to discuss common techniques, tools, and applications.

Grover Zinn, William H. Danforth Professor of Religion and Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, recently organized and chaired a session at the annual International Conference on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University. Last spring, Zinn participated in a conference at Claremont Graduate University in honor of Marcia Colish, Artz Emeritus Professor of History, and gave a lecture on teaching and religion in colleges at the University of Chicago.