University of Rochester Medical Center said this week that Hulin Wu, a professor of biostatistics and computational biology, will serve as the founding director of its newly established Center for Integrative Bioinformatics and Experimental Mathematics.

The new center is part of the university's department of biostatistics and computational biology and will work on integrating and strengthening current biostatistics, bioinformatics, and computational biology resources at the center. The school hopes to develop a strong interdisciplinary research program and attract external funding, in particular large center grants and program grants in bioinformatics, computational biology and systems biology. It also plans to establish a PhD/MS education program in bioinformatics and computational biology

Initially, the center will serve researchers conducting basic science experiments, clinical studies, and translational research in immunology and infectious diseases. It also hopes to develop techniques and approaches to manage, analyze, and extract meaningful information from biomedical data.

Biogazelle, a real-time PCR data analysis company, has tapped Kris Vanhercke to serve as its chief operating officer.

Prior to joining Biogazelle, Vanhercke held a number of positions within Roche Diagnostics with the most recent being sales director for Roche Diagnostics Belgian office. He also held a scientific sales position at Boehringer Mannheim.

The American Medical Informatics Association has tapped Kevin Fickenscher as president and CEO of the organization.

Fickenscher will officially start his new role on April 1. He replaces Ted Shortliffe, who announced his decision to step down from the position several months ago.

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People in the News: Hulin Wu; Kris Vanhercke; Kevin Fickenscher