Dr. Dean Wins Apple Bioinformatics Award

Award supports work to develop chlamydia vaccine

Deborah Dean, MD, MPH, a senior scientist at Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute, was one of five people chosen from hundreds of applicants for Apple’s Bioinformatics Award Program. Winners were selected in recognition of biotechnology research breakthroughs that are shaping our health and our world.

Dr. Dean and the other winners will receive a fully-provisioned Apple Workgroup Cluster for Bioinformatics, which makes it easy for scientists to harness the immense power of computational clusters.

Research to find a vaccine
Dr. Dean is searching for a vaccine for chlamydia, the leading cause of preventable blindness and sexually transmitted diseases in the world today.

“I’m looking at different strains of chlamydia from all over the world,” Dr. Dean explained. “Through sequencing and comparative genomics, we hope to determine not only how strains vary in terms of virulence but how new strains emerge — that will contribute greatly to vaccine development.”

Role of bioinformatics
Bioinformatics are a key component in her research, which involves analysis of large amounts of data.

“I have a lot of different software packages and tools at my fingertips, but it’s incredibly frustrating to go from one program to another,” said Dr. Dean. “That’s why the cluster is absolutely superb. I can analyze data in completely different ways on a single platform. People who do what I do are always looking for the best technology. Apple’s state-of-the-art technology has the capability of doing not only bioinformatics, but also biostatistics and mathematical modeling on a single cluster.”

“Developing a vaccine to prevent Chlamydia has been my life-long goal," she continued, "but along the way we can develop public health interventions based on the knowledge we gain through bioinformatics, which will also enhance the probability of developing an efficacious vaccine.”