O Canada!

A couple of weeks ago, Jake returned to our home continent to participate in the 2008 Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology conference in Toronto.

The conference, which is put on annually by the International Society for Computational Biology, was held this year in a conference center with all the charm and intimacy of an underground Soviet fallout bunker.

Feeding time for the refugees of science.

During the conference, Jake had the opportunity to present some of his recent research with a poster titled, "Pathway Prediction with eQTL and Gene Interaction Networks". (*shrug* Hey, don't look at me. I just share the man's bed.)

He said it was his most productive conference poster session to date, which means that a lot of people were interested in his research and wanted to hear more.

Can you spot the Jake?

Bing!

Occasionally Jake was able to leave the conference center and do fun things. Like stay in this totally lux hotel room:


and walk down the street where he had previously done battle with Combine soldiers in an academic mod of his favorite video game Half Life 2, which was based in Toronto.


He also visited Toronto's lovely mall:


and saw this great car with grass growing out of it.


Jake sat down with AD to discuss his feelings after his first visit to the United States' sister-land.

American Dresdner: So, how did you find Toronto?
Jake J. Michaelson: My general impression was that I was more impressed than I expected to be.
AD: Can you expound?
JJM: It was by far the most ethnically diverse place I have ever visited to the point of almost being overwhelming. The dynamic range of ethnicity and culture is just wider than anything I've ever experienced before. You almost get the feeling that every ethnicity that exists on planet Earth is equally represented among the whole population.
AD: Did being in Canada feel like being in the U.S. again?
JJM: Almost. For one thing, a vast majority of the people were speaking English in an accent identical to my own. There were American cars. There was an American feel in the way that buildings were constructed. Streets were perpendicular. Lots of parking lots and asphalt.
AD: What was different?
JJM: The fact that everything has to be written in French as well as English was probably the most overtly different thing.
AD: You expressed to JEM that you experienced a degree of "reverse culture shock". Can you explain that?
JJM: For one thing, I was surprised at how few people smoked. I noticed that I looked at things from a German/European critical eye. Many of the buildings looked like they had flimsy construction. There was way too much water in the toilet bowls. The fact that tax is added on top of the advertised price was annoying. And I found people's over-abundant friendliness artificial and off-putting.
AD: Americans are going to hate you guys when you come home.
JJM: We'll hate them right back. Keep the transatlantic tradition alive.
AD: Since you spend a lot of time preparing and presenting posters at scientific conferences, can you explain to our non-scientist readers what the purpose of a "poster session" is?
JJM: You remember your science fair when you're in elementary school? It's basically a glorified version of that, but a lot more boring. There are no live exhibits of experiments. Instead there's much more wordy jargon on the posters.
AD: Can you give us a basic idea of what your poster this time around was about?
JJM: No.
AD: Well, that's terribly accommodating of you.
JJM: It's not my fault, there's just no basic way of explaining it. It's not possible. Here's my short abstract: A network analysis method is presented and applied to expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) data. The method is designed to overcome weaknesses of eQTL analysis, including noise, false positives, and a lack of molecular context. Results show improvement in recapitulating pathway members, compared to conventional eQTL approaches.
AD: I think I speak for all AD readers when I say, "Dazzling." I also understand you brought a couple of surprises back for JEM.
JJM: That's right.



AD: You sure know how to treat a girl.