Preliminary WACD 2025 Program: Celebrating the Value of Collaborative Science
Note that session times and order are currently preliminary and are subject to change. Speaker biographies and talk or session abstracts will be posted below as they become available.
Tuesday, October 7th
8:30-9:00 Registration: Coffee & Lite Pastries (breakfast available at hotel)
9:00-9:15 Welcome & Opening Remarks – Host: Diane Miller (WACD President)
Land Acknowledgement
9:15-11:00 Session 1: Data Management for High Performance Computing
Sponsor : Agilent
Moderator: TBA
Speaker: Sean Taylor (Seattle Children’s Research Institute)
Speaker: Aarya Vaikakkara Chithran (Seattle Children’s Research Institute)
Speaker: Sam Minot (Fred Hutch Cancer Center)
11:00-11:30 Coffee Break
11:30-12:45 Session 2: Cross Core Collaborations
Sponsor : Illumina
Moderator: TBA
Speaker: Michele Black (Fred Hutch Cancer Center) – Flow Cytometry
Speaker: Alex Zevin (Fred Hutch Cancer Center) – Genomics
Speaker: Sujata Jana (Fred Hutch Cancer Center) – Experimental Histopathology
12:45-2:10: Lunch, Vendor Visits and Networking
Sponsor: TBA
Lunch and Learn Presented by BD Biosciences (85 min. separate room)
Vendor Booths open
2:10-3:25 Session 3: Communicating the Value of your Core to Institutional Leaders, to Users, to Potential Customers
Sponsor: New England Biolabs
Moderator: Ben Abrams (UCSC)
Speaker: Claudius Mundoma (Stanford) – Value Propositions
Speaker: Alex Nobel (Salk institute) – Core Satisfaction Surveys
Speaker: Alison Killilea (UC Berkeley) – SecondLab
3:25-3:55 Coffee Break
3:55-4:30 Session 4: Lead into Keynote
ABRF Introduction – Sara Bowen (Barrow Neurological Institute)
Sponsor: Qiagen
Moderator: TBA
4:30-5:30 Keynote Speaker: Alice Berger, Associate Professor Human Biology Division (Fred Hutch Cancer Center)
5:30-7:00: Cocktail Reception
Sponsor: Qiagen
Wednesday, October 8th
8:30-9:00: Coffee & Lite Pastries (breakfast available at hotel)
9:00-10:45 Session 5: Leadership
Sponsor: Parse Biosciences
Moderator: TBA
Speaker: Naledi Saul, Office of Career and Professional Development (UCSF) – How to Have Productive Disagreements
10:45-11:00 Coffee Break
11:00-12:15 Session 6: Cores in the Community
Sponsor: 10x Genomics
Moderator: Ben Abrams (UCSC)
Speaker: Spencer Seiler (UCSC) NSF iCorps Program to Encourage Entrepreneurship
Speaker: Bria Metzger (University of Washington) – Lil (“Little”) Lab Network
Speaker: Keolu Fox (Native Bio) – Earth Friendly Computation and Indigenous Data Sovereignty
12:15-1:30: Lunch, Vendor Visits, Networking
Sponsor: TBA
Vendor Booths Open
1:30-3:00 Session 7: Continuing the Discussion About Core Centralization vs. Decentralization
Sponsor: Seer
Moderator: TBA
Speaker: Raj Uthamanthil (Seattle Children’s Research Institute) –
Speaker: Gordon Roble (Fred Hutch Cancer Center) – AVP Shared Resources
Speaker: Isabelle Girard ( UCD) – Director, Research Core Facilities Program
3:00-3:15 Coffee Break
3:15-4:45 Session 8: Alternate Methods to Fund Equipment Purchase
Moderator: Kristen Jepsen (UCSD)
Speaker: Aaron Larson (Seattle Children’s Research Institute) – Philanthropy
Speaker: Shelly Fortner (University of Colorado, Anschutz)
4:45-5:00 Closing Remarks
