As Worlds Collide: Join Xconomy for Big Data Meets Big Biology

What happens when the power of advanced computing and large-scale data technologies are applied in healthcare and the life sciences?

Imagine what might happen if two tsunamis came together near the coast.

On April 26, Xconomy will explore how the inexorable trends in IT and life sciences are driving transformational change, and how innovations in this convergence are creating companies that are poised to take over large swathes of the economy. We’re convening in San Diego at the Illumina Theater at The Alexandria, and we’re calling it the Xconomy Forum on Big Data Meets Big Biology.

We’re gathering key leaders from as far as Boston and the Bay Area to explain how genomics is focusing increasingly on information science, how healthtech startups are implementing IT innovations like blockchain, and how all of this could impact patients, doctors, and the healthcare industry in general.

Our confirmed speakers so far:

—Jonathan Sheffi,  product manager, Genomics & Life Sciences at Google

—Nicholas Schork, professor and director of human biology at the J. Craig Venter Institute.

—Robin Thurston, CEO, Helix

—Dawn Barry, president, Luna DNA

—Jean Balgrosky, CTO, MintHealth, and CIO, MD Revolution

—Steffanie Strathdee, Associate Dean of Global Health, UCSD Medical School and professor of epidemiology, Director, UCSD Global Health Institute

—Tajana Šimunić Rosing, UCSD professor of computer science, Director of UCSD Center for Healthy Aging.

—Eduardo Esquenazi, founder and chairman, Sirenas

—Doug Winter, Seismic CEO

—Scot Chisholm, Classy CEO

We’ll have more to announce soon, but tickets are now available online here. Register now and save $96 with Xconomy’s super saver price of $99. See you in April!

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.