The morning started with a Plenary Kenote by Bryn Roberts from Roche.  His talk was titled "Interacting with Complex Information Landscapes: Integration and Next Generation User Interfaces." He talked about the challenges of Pharma, and focused on integration tools. He asked the bioinformatics audience to be innovative and create solutions beyond what scientists want today. He believes that team decision making will accelerate discovery, and feels technology can assist this essential step for scientific breakthroughs.

He presented a video that showed two scientists standing in front of a large flat screen monitor and using their fingers and hands to move items across the screen. This type of interaction allows scientists to collaborate by exploring integrated information related to literature, systems networks, gene information, and compound structures. The way the scientists moved the items around the large monitor it looked like a scene from the movie "The Minority Report" with Tom Cruise.

During the noon hour and within the Cloud Computing Track 3, Life Technologies sponsored a session related to Cloud Computing.

The session started with a short presentation by Tom Coull from Penguin Computing. He showed how LifeScope(TM) Software can be accessed through lifescopecloud.com.

   Tom Coull (Penguin Computing)

Next, Nicholas Socci from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, gave a presentation titled " Experiencing LifeScope(TM) Genomic Anaysis Software through the Cloud." He explained how LifeScope™ software gives customers an alternative to buying and maintaining the computer infrastructure typically required for second-generation sequencing data analysis. He was happy to see the introduction of the XSQ file, the new functionality of the command line, and the improved GUI. The 30 minute session had a full attendance, and most attendees stayed for both presentations.

   Nicholas Socci (MSKCC)