Katie Ballering
I'm a third year student in Gary Dunny's lab in the Microbiology Immunology and Cancer Biology program. I'm terrible with computers so I'm a bit worried about my abilities in that area of the class. I hope that we have fun this semester.

Jagan Jayaraj
I am a second year Master's student with the Computer Science department and I am planning to do a thesis, mostly on protein function prediction, with Prof . Vipin Kumar. I would like to apply data mining / machine learning techniques for the function prediction problem. I find MICA 8006 to be a very good complementary course and thats why I am here. I am looking forward a rewarding learning experience with this course. Hope to have many fruitful discussions/interactions with you guys!

Ham Ching Lam
I am a grad student working with Prof. Dan Boley in the CSCI dept. I have been working on microarray data analysis since last semester. Currently I am using Machine Learning techniques on gene expression data. I do not know much about protein sequence analysis so I am hoping this course might help me get started. Hopefully I can apply what I know from Machine Learning field to this new area and come up with something new or newer!

Rebecca LaRue
I am a second year PhD student in the Comparative Molecular Bioscience (CMB) program and a member of Reuben Harris's lab in the Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biophysics (BMBB). I hoping that this class will help me brush up on my knowledge of biochemistry, as well as introduce me to bioinformatics. My computer abilities are lacking, but I am encouraged by the small class size, and diverse backgrounds of everyone in this class. I look forward to getting to know everyone.

Getiria Onsongo
I am a PhD student in the Computer Science Department working under Dr. John Carlis. I have done a few bioinformatics and sequence analysis projects but mostly worked on the computer science side of things. I would like to get a better understanding of the biochemistry side of things. I am also pursuing a minor in bioinformatics.

Charlie Paule
I work with Ernie Retzel and John Crow's group, mostly on EST sequencing projects so far. So I would like to get some more practical experience using protein analysis tools in this course. I do a lot of Perl programming, but am a bit rusty on biology. So maybe we can teach each other a few things!

Matthew Pendleton
I'm a 2nd year graduate student in pharmacology working in the Marchant lab. My research interests are the developmental modulation of intracellular calcium dynamics through the Inositol Triphosphate receptor family of ER calcium channels both from a cloning/expression approach and through an approach involving a lot of bioinformatics coincidentally enough. I have a long history of programming, but this is my first venture into perl. I'd wanted to give it a try a few years ago, but never accumulated the necessary will to really do it. I figured that aiming at not failing this class would be sufficient impetus to that end, so here I am.

Kristyn VanderWaal
I am a second year PhD student in Mary Porter's lab in the department of Genetics, Cell Biology and Development. I am not very good with computers but I hope to get a lot better during this class! I look forward to learning with you and getting to know you better.