News Library
FOR NINE, A BIOINFORMATICS SUMMER CAMP
Published on July 10, 2003
Author: STEPHEN WATSON - News Staff Reporter
© The Buffalo News Inc.
Most high school students who sign up for summer camp spend their afternoons playing soccer, practicing cheerleading stunts or roughing it at Camp Hiawatha.
But for nine area high school students, summer camp means days spent at the University at Buffalo wrapping their minds around the new high-tech concept of bioinformatics. The students are spending two weeks at UB's Summer High School Workshop in Computational Science, learning about the futuristic marriage of life science and computer science. "I guess it was part curiosity, and I didn't have anything better to do," said Courtney Kiszewski, 17, a senior at Mount St. Mary Academy. This is the fifth year for UB's summer computer science program for high school students, but it's the first year with a bioinformatics focus. UB officials say it's one of the few structured bioinformatics programs for high school students in the country. "In no small part we started this workshop because of the need to take a facility like (the Center for Computational Research) and reach out to the next generation of scientists," said Bruce Pitman, a mathematics professor and UB's vice provost for information technology. Students from Amherst Central, Clarence Central, Orchard Park Central and Williamsville East high schools and Mount St. Mary's have been working in teams to analyze genetic data and write computer code. "(Bioinformatics) is definitely a breaking field, and it's definitely going to be expanding the next few years," said Justin Pratt, 16, an Amherst junior. The students heard a lecture on scientific ethics Tuesday from David J. Triggle, a pharmacy professor and former UB provost. "Science is under siege because science is fallible. Scientists make mistakes," Triggle said. The students later toured UB's computational center, one of the world's most powerful supercomputers. Computer center staffers showed them a tiled display wall, which uses 20 projectors connected to 20 computers to display high-resolution computer animation -- in this case a 3-D model of the Peace Bridge. In the students' main summer project, they're working in teams to analyze a database for the genome of the wall cress or mouse-ear cress, a flowering plant. The students are setting up a Web site and writing computer code that will allow users to access and search a database of the plant's genetic information through the Web. "I used to want to be a doctor, but this seems more the future," said Darcy Brown, 17, a senior at Mount St. Mary's. e-mail: swatson@buffnews.comHARRY SCULL JR./Buffalo News
Students learning the rudiments of bioinformatics are riveted to a
wall-size 3-D image of the Peace Bridge during UB's Workshop in
Computational Science.
<
Search again:
