April 12, 2024 (@ DH Seattle): Dr. Chris Whidbey, Assistant Professor, Seattle University

Over the last 20 years, developments in tech have resulted in complete genome sequences from hundreds of thousands of organisms across the Earth. With all of this information, the roadblock has become identifying what genes are truly important to for a given system. Dr. Chris Whidbey will present an approach to solving this problem called activity-based protein profiling (ABPP). By combining chemistry and biology, ABPP can fish out the functionally active gene products from a sample. He will discuss his team’s work using ABPP to identify the important genes in human microbiomes and how ABPP can be used to discover new biological tools.

May 10, 2024: Dr. Jay Shendure, Professor - Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington

In this talk, Dr. Shendure will describe our ongoing efforts to develop and apply new technologies aimed at reconstructing the entirety of mouse embryonic development at single cell resolution. A first approach that he is pursuing involves single cell profiling of whole embryos at successive timepoints, resulting in “snapshots” that must be pieced together analogous to a timelapse movie. A complementary approach that Dr. Shendure is also pursuing involves time-resolved molecular recording, essentially leveraging DNA as a substrate to write information that informs the reconstruction of cell lineage and other molecular events as they transpired over the course of a single embryo's development. Under these two strategies, Dr. Shendure will discuss progress and challenges towards the long-term dream of comprehensively modeling the entirety of mouse prenatal development, from a single cell zygote to a free-living pup.

June 14, 2023: Dr. Brandon Hopkins, Assistant Research Professor, WSU

Honey bees are critical to producing around 70% of foods consumed worldwide, but colony losses in recent decades have beekeepers and farmers concerned for their crops. Beekeeping is an age-old practice that has greatly lagged behind other agricultural industries. However, our team is taking advantage of new technologies and easier access to tools to improve honey bee health, reduce the pressure of pesticides, and uncover the causes of colony losses each year. Washington State University’s Dr. Brandon Hopkins will provide a brief overview of some of the technological advances his group has made, and existing technologies they are using in innovative ways, to support beekeepers, offer insight to the causes of colony losses, and to generate new information that is directing policy changes nationwide.

March 8 (@ Northeastern University Seattle): Dr. Alice Long, Associate Member, Principal Investigator - Long Lab, Benaroya Research Institute

For over a century, the only treatment for type 1 diabetes (T1D) has been insulin—a lifesaving therapy that addresses symptoms of the disease, but not the root cause. In 2022, the FDA approved the first ever therapy to target the root cause of an autoimmune disease: teplizumab. Teplizumab can actually delay the onset of T1D for up to 2 years. This is a paradigm-shifting feat—not just for treating T1D, but all autoimmune diseases. The approval is the result of decades of research from researchers across the world, including Dr. Alice Long of Seattle’s Benaroya Research Institute (BRI). Teplizumab is the result of collaboration within BRI and across the globe, and proof that BRI’s ultimate goal is possible: We can change the course of autoimmune diseases before they start.

February 9, 2024: Dr. Anna Kuchina, Assistant Professor, Institute for Systems Biology

Scientists have long been fascinated by the individuality and social lives of bacteria. It turns out that even when they share the same genes, bacteria can behave in diverse ways, helping each other survive through sharing tasks or hiding each other from harm. They collaborate to form biofilms, resilient communities that make infections tough to treat. Dr. Kuchina is delving into this microbial world using cutting-edge genomic technology. By studying the behavior of individuals within bacterial communities, she aims to develop strategies to combat stubborn infections and improve the health of our gut microbiota, the complex community of microorganisms in our digestive system.

January 12, 2024: Dr. Steve Brunton, Professor, University of Washington

Turbulence is all around us. We’re surrounded by fluids, and they play a crucial role in our health, transportation, energy, and defense systems. However, understanding how these fluids behave in real-life situations can be complicated as fluid movements are complex, evolving on different scales in space and time. This makes it challenging and expensive to study and predict accurately. Fortunately, recent advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence offer promising solutions. In this talk, Dr. Steve Brunton will dive into how these technologies are being used to make sense of and control the unpredictable behaviors of fluids. Dr. Brunton will also highlight recent breakthroughs and the importance of making these computer solutions interpretable by humans and applicable across diverse contexts.

November 3, 2023 (@ Seattle University): Dr. Allison Myers-Pigg, Earth Scientist, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Wildfires change the landscape, altering the types of materials transported to rivers. They also change how materials are transported, both of which can impact local water quality. Dr. Myers-Pigg will discuss ongoing research on how nutrients and other materials change over time and space post-wildfire in river systems across the Pacific Northwest. Understanding what causes these changes can help us to better be able to predict the influence of wildfires on watersheds.

October 13, 2023: Dr. Joshua Heyne, Director of the Bioproducts, Sciences, & Engineering Lab, WSU Tri-Cities

Aviation connects people across continents and oceans like no other technology has. As the world mobilizes to a net-zero economy, the aviation industry has pledged to eliminate its radiative impact on the planet similarly. Aviation, unfortunately, is particularly hard to decarbonize due to the energetics of flight, safety standards, current airline operations and market, the service life of aircraft, and the time needed to design, build, and certify new hardware. Here, an overview of one sustainable aviation path with sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) will be highlighted. Pathways for SAF production, current commercialization plans in the US and Washington State, and ongoing efforts to quantify and eliminate the impact of aviation on the environment will be emphasized.

September 8, 2023 (@ Russell Investments Center): Dr. Aimee Dudley, Senior Investigator & Director of Educational Outreach, PNRI

September is Newborn Screening Awareness Month. Newborn screening (NBS) is a successful public health program that can prevent illness and death by pre-symptomatically identifying rare, serious, and treatable diseases that can appear in the newborn period. Unfortunately, the positive impact of NBS is currently limited to a set of ~35 conditions that can be screened biochemically. While genome sequencing could rapidly screen for most of the hundreds of inherited diseases that arise in the newborn period, sequencing frequently returns variants of uncertain significance that cannot be used for diagnosis and treatment. Dr. Dudley will describe how her lab is using high throughput methods in Baker’s yeast to determine the functional impact of genetic variants in genes associated with a set of devastating, but treatable inherited metabolic diseases.

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Accenture

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ENGAGING SPONSORS:

Clark Nuber

Helion Energy

Keiretsu Forum Northwest

K&L Gates

Perkins Coie

WRF Capital