Annual Retreat held January 22, 2026
The Ray & Stephanie Lane Computational Biology Department (CBD) held their annual Department-wide retreat on Thursday, Jan 22. For the first time, the department headed off-campus, to Mill 19 in Hazelwood, to gather as a community, including faculty, staff, and students at all levels.
The retreat was a chance for members of the community to come together to hear about what is going on in the department, learn about one another’s work, share ideas for the future of the department, and have some fun together.
The program began with a state of the department address given by Department Head, Russell Schwartz, sharing some exciting news and updates and considering both successes of the program and challenges ahead.
The program then featured a keynote lecture, given by of Â鶹´å’s Machine Learning Department, on her work in bringing machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to neuroscience and cognitive science.
Much of the day was devoted to showcasing department research. CBD faculty and trainees gave 10-minute “lighting talks” providing updates on exciting work across many of the department’s research groups covering such topics as automated science, synthetic biology, the genetic basis of disease, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and cancer research. Talk sessions were interspersed with a vibrant poster session where department students could share their work in more detail. Congratulations to Rajee Ganesan and Seh Na Mellick, the winners of the department’s poster competition.
The program also left time for fun, including lunch, discussion sessions, and a team trivia competition. The winning trivia team, "And in the Lead" was comprised of Assistant Teaching Professor Dan DeBlasio, MSCB students, Cleo Chen, Myra Haider, and Ashwath Raghuram, and Teaching Professor Phillip Compeau.
The day concluded with an open forum Town Hall meeting led again by Russell Schwartz, which prompted a vibrant discussion about the department’s operations, the future of its research and teaching mission, and how it is navigating challenges of academic research today.