INAUGURAL UNIVERSITY RESEARCH DAY WILL BE HELD MARCH 23
Poster presentations on everything from the origins of life and facial recognition technologies to exercise and diabetes and recent findings about the rust on the USS Monitor will be on exhibit March 23 for Old Dominion University Research Day.
The event, scheduled for noon to 7 p.m. in the Ted Constant Convocation Center arena, will also feature demonstrations of groundbreaking work, such as the use of tiny electrical pulses to impact cells and organisms, and modeling, simulation and visualization techniques for applications ranging from flight to crowd behavior. Among the approximately 150 poster presentations and displays will be several interactive exhibits.
More than 100 faculty and students from all six colleges will be on hand for Research Day to explain their projects and answer questions.
"Because of the substantial growth ODU has experienced and the resulting increase in the number of faculty doing a variety of research, this is a great opportunity for both the campus community and the general public to explore some exciting, new work," said Robert Ash, interim vice president for research. "For our faculty, in particular, this is an opportunity to discover what their colleagues are doing in other colleges and to explore things they can do together.
"This is a chance, too, to give young people a better understanding of how research is done in higher education and why they should consider attending a research university in the future."
A reception, sponsored by the Virginia Advanced Shipbuilding and Carrier Integration Center, a department of Northrop Grumman Newport News, is scheduled for 4:30-6 p.m. in the arena. All of the Research Day events are free and open to the public.
Leroy Hood, president of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, will give the Research Day keynote address, "Systems Biology: Deciphering Life and Changing Medicine," at 6 p.m.
Hood, who received his Ph.D. at California Institute of Technology and an M.D. at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, is internationally known for his groundbreaking contributions to molecular biotechnology and genomics. His professional career has included instrumental contributions to the development of the DNA gene sequence and synthesizer, and the protein synthesizer and sequencer.
He has played a role in founding biotechnology companies such as Amgen, Applied Biosystems, Systemix, Rosetta and MacroGenics.
Ash, who describes Hood as a stimulating speaker, added, "Dr. Hood is truly a pioneer in pushing the boundaries of information technology and biotechnology in directions that have never been explored previously."
As the William Gates III Professor at the University of Washington, Hood formed a cross-disciplinary Department of Molecular Biotechnology in 1992. In 2000, he co-founded the Institute for Systems Biology, a research enterprise dedicated to systems approaches to biology and medicine. The institute merges the disciplines of biology, medicine, mathematics, computer science, physics, chemistry and engineering to understand and solve specific problems in the life sciences.
Recently, Hood was awarded the prestigious Lemelson-MIT Prize for Invention and Innovation.