Edward G. Jefferson Chair of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology and director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, is leading research to sequence the genome of a fish called the little skate (Leucoraja erinacea). It is one of 11 non-mammalian organisms selected by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as a model for human health research.
Native to the east coast of North America, the little skate shares key characteristics with the human immune, circulatory and nervous systems. But this sea creature has a very important capability we do not have. It can re-grow body parts after they are injured. Wu and her UD team are part of a regional collaboration working to map the little skate’s genome in hopes of unlocking the secrets of this regenerative ability for the benefit of humans.
The Little Skate Genome Project is part of the North East Cyberinfrastructure Consortium (NECC), which was formed in 2007 to build critical cyberinfrastructure and expertise in bioinformatics in its member states, which include Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont.
To date, more than 100 NECC researchers and students have contributed to the little skate’s genome sequencing and annotation through a series of bioinformatics training workshops held at UD and Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory in Maine and annotation jamborees held online across partner institutions.
The project has supported recent articles in Science, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Database: The Journal of Biological Databases and Curation and has produced a community resource, Skatebase (skatebase.org), for broad dissemination of the genomic data and bioinformatics tools to the biomedical research community.
professor of computer and information sciences, recently was selected as a “distinguished scientist” by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the world’s largest scientific and educational computing society.
Pollock is leading research in software analysis to improve software testing and maintenance tools for software engineers, and collaborating on research in green software engineering. Yet her influence extends far beyond the computer lab.
Pollock has devoted much of her career to broadening the participation of women in computing and its research opportunities by organizing career mentoring programs and workshops through the Computing Research Association’s Committee on the Status of Women in Computing (CRA-W), and the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women conference series.
At UD, Pollock is an avid undergraduate and graduate mentor who co-created, with colleague Terry Harvey, a service learning course that matches computer science student teams with middle school teachers to design learning games for XO laptops, the computers developed by the One Laptop Per Child Program.
During the past year, her students devised math learning games for the Chester Community Charter School in Chester, Pa., and an English-to-Creole tutor application in Haiti to help Haitian women and their students improve their English.
chief technology officer in UD Information Technologies (IT), says that upgrades to the University’s computing network is “a continuous process,” as higher speeds become available with newer technology, and network utilization continues to grow.
In 2006, UD purchased a 20-year lease of a fiber-optic ring that links Newark, Del., to Philadelphia, Pa. Today, the network runs at 10 gigabits/second, carrying all of the University’s traffic to the Internet (Internet 1) as well as to Internet 2, an advanced networking consortium led by the research and education community.
Plans are under way to upgrade the network’s equipment to carry multiples of 10 gigabits/second using the same optical fiber (up to 880 gigabits/second).
“We are also upgrading the speed of the network ‘backbone’ from one gigabit/second to 10 gigabits/second this year, and ultimately to 40 and 100 gigabits/second in the future as demand dictates,” Grim says.
The Mills high-performance computing cluster, launched earlier this year, is the first in a series of clusters planned by IT to help advance the University’s research mission.