An assembly masterclass

Motivated by conversations during Holly Bik's excellent SMBE Satellite Meeting on Eukaryotes, it is clear that there is lots of interesting stuff going on at Davis in general. But they also have lots of weird and challenging assembly problems.

So, I invited us all to run a workshop at Davis, hosted by Holly and funded by the NIH and NSF, to explore topics at the intersection of "sequencing weird stuff" and "assembling it." The goal, in brief, is to explore assembly approaches, algorithms, software, and sequencing data at a "masterclass" level, which basically means "we're all confused but we are really experienced at being confused about this particular topic, so we'd like to help you out."

More specifically, we hope for one outcome of this workshop to be a review paper talking about challenges of sequencing and assembling diverse critters. I think we'll also develop some ideas for new diagnostic tools and approaches while we're there.

Attending: The workshop will be December 16-20th, 2013, and it is is mostly booked up by Eisen lab members. We do have a few spots open for other people; drop me or Holly a note. (You'd have to supply your own travel and lodging; this is not a particularly well-funded workshop. :)

As to "Why Davis?", well, it's where the Eisen Lab is, and also if you are doing something in December, California seems like a better choice than England (Nick), Oslo (Lex), Toronto (Jared), or Michigan (me).

--titus