November 09, 2012, Webb 1100

The prospect of nanopores as a next-generation sequencing (NGS) platform has been a topic ofgrowing interest and considerable government-sponsored research for more than a decade. OxfordNanopore Technologies recently announced the first commercial nanopore sequencing devices, tobe made available by the end of 2012, while other companies (Life, Roche, IBM) are alsopursuing nanopore sequencing approaches. In this talk, the state of the art in nanoporesequencing is reviewed, focusing on the most recent contributions that have or promise to haveNGS commercial potential. I will also describe my labs work on the signal processing challenges associate with nanopore sequencing, and our use of nanopores in biophysical studies.

William B. Dunbar received a B.S. in engineering science and mechanics from Virginia Tech in 1997, an M.S. in applied mechanics and engineering science from UC San Diego in 1999, and a Ph.D. in control and dynamical systems from Caltech in 2004. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Engineering at UC Santa Cruz. Current research is focused on the application of systems and control tools to single molecule biophysics and DNA sequencing with nanopores. Dunbar is a recipient of a five-year K25 retraining award from the National Institutes of Health (NHGRI, 2006) and an NSF CAREER award (ECCS, 2009).