The Louis and Beatrice Laufer Center for Computational Biology and Genome Sciences

The Laufer Center for Computational Biology and Genome Sciences was established in 2008 in loving memory of Louis and Beatrice Laufer by their children, Helen Laufer Kaplan and Howard Kaplan, Jeffrey and Barbara Laufer and Henry and Marsha Laufer. Initiated with a major philanthropic gift, the Center supports three endowed professorships, including a Distinguished Professorial Chair, to be occupied by the Director of the Center. Laboratories and offices for Center faculty will be located on the 4th floor of the Chemistry Building.
The Laufer Center is designed to be a focus of interdisciplinary research in the several fields that impact on – and are impacted by – quantitative biology, including computational molecular biology, computational genomics and systems biology). Accordingly, the Center will play a central role in the recently created Stony Brook Collaborative Research Alliance (Stony Brook University, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Additionally, genome sciences represents a major interdisciplinary area in which Laufer Center and associated faculty will be intimately involved, including studies of MRSA and other forms of antimicrobial resistance.
Distinguished scientists working in areas relevant to Laufer Center initiatives visited Stony Brook during the fall of 2008 to consult with the Center’s Advisory Committees and to give lectures on their research. These lectures are an integral part of a new seminar course in computational biology and genomics (CHE 603) organized by Dr Carlos Simmerling. The seminars, open to all faculty and graduate students, are held generally on Tuesdays at 4:00 pm in the Chemistry Building with certain lectures being held in the Health Sciences Center.