A panel of distinguished experts will discuss the role of computation and data analytics in supporting biological discovery when XSEDE13—the annual conference focusing on science, education, outreach, software, and technology related to the National Science Foundation's eXtreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment—is held July 22-25 at the San Diego Marriott Marquis and Marina in downtown San Diego.

One day of the conference (July 24) will be devoted to work in the biosciences. In addition to the panel discussion, there will be plenary talks, paper presentations, lightning talks, posters and a gallery of scientific visualizations.

"I think it's important for computational scientists to think deeply about the coming challenges in the biosciences, and this panel and the other activities and presentations will provide an excellent opportunity to further these connections," said Nancy Wilkins-Diehr of the San Diego Supercomputer Center, XSEDE13 general chair and co-director of XSEDE's Extended Collaborative Support Services.

Moderating the panel will be Kevin Patrick, professor of Family and Preventive Medicine at the University of California, San Diego and director of the Center for Wireless and Population Health Systems at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (CalIT2). Panelists will be:

• Alex Dickinson, senior vice president, Cloud Genomics, Illumina. In this role, he is responsible for building a bioinformatics ecosystem for Illumina's customers to connect with academic, commercial and open-source tool providers to accelerate genomic data analysis.
• Donald Jones, chief digital officer at the Scripps Translational Science Institute and vice president of global strategy and market development for Qualcomm Life. He is responsible for Qualcomm's development of wireless technologies and platforms in the health, fitness and life sciences markets.
• Darryl León, associate director, product management, Life Technologies. He is responsible for developing bioinformatics software and hardware solutions to support next-gen sequencing instruments and has more than 10 years' experience with software informatics companies.
• Karen Nelson, president, J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI). She has extensive experience in microbial ecology, microbial genomics, microbial physiology and metagenomics. Since joining the JCVI, she has led several genomic and metagenomic efforts, including leading the first human metagenomics study, which was published in 2006.
• Glen Otero, Life Sciences HPC Solution Architect, Dell. He is responsible for capturing computational biology requirements from customers and incorporating them into HPC design recommendations for Dell's HPC Group. He also works closely with Dell's partners to research and document various aspects of bioinformatics application performance.
• Nicholas Schork, director of bioinformatics and biostatistics at the Scripps Translational Science Institute, his expertise is quantitative human genetics and genomics, especially the design and implementation of methodologies to dissect the genetic basis of complex traits and diseases.

The annual XSEDE conference brings together hundreds of technologists, researchers, educators, and students from across the country. For full bios of all of the panelists and more about Biosciences Day, see https://www.xsede.org/web/xsede13/biosciences-day