2026 Student-Organized Symposium

BU Bioinformatics Student-Organized Symposium

The annual Bioinformatics Student-Organized Symposium (SoS) was held on June 3rd, 2026. Every aspect of this symposium is organized by graduate students, from nominating and inviting keynote speakers, to planning the schedule of events.

Guest Speakers:
Our speakers represent a broad range of research interests across industry and academia. 

Hadley Wickham, PhD
Chief Scientist @ Posit
At Posit, Hadley leads the tidyverse team and works on tools to enable faster, more accessible data science.

Belinda Akpa, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering @ University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Director of Data Sciences & AI, National Institute for Modeling Biological Systems
The MADBio lab uses mechanistic mathematical modeling as a formal, testable sensemaking approach to navigate the path from extant biological knowledge to actionable insights.

Nathan Grubaugh, PhD
Associate Professor of Epidemiology @ Yale SPH
The Grubaugh lab develops viral genomics tools with a focus on use in public health response and information systems.

Rahul Satija, PhD
Core Faculty, New York Genome Center @ NYU
The Satija lab creates experimental and computational methods for collecting and analyzing single-cell and spatially resolved multiomics data.

David Bray, PhD
Data Product Engineer, Digital For Research & TechDev @ Moderna
At Moderna, David leads development on research software tools for interactive analysis and complex data visualization.

Alumni Panel:
This year’s symposium will also feature an alumni industry panel, where current students can learn more about skill transfer and preparing for success after BU. Stay tuned for information on how to submit questions for the moderated discussion!

Sara Collins, PhD
Senior Scientist II, Computational and Molecular Biology @ Alltrna

Sean Corbett, PhD
Principal Investigator Computational Biologist @ Biohaven

Demarcus Briers, PhD
Full Stack Scientific Software Engineer @ Dyno Therapeutics

Daniel Lancour, PhD
Staff Data Engineer @ Dyno Therapeutics

Student Committee:
Sarah Bald
Payton Bock
Preshita Dave
Stephanie Hao
Yeting Li
Dillon Scott