Golden Helix Names Winners in First Research Competition

Bozeman, MT (February 28, 2014) — Golden Helix, Inc. today announced the winners of their recent world-wide research competition. The competition was a first for Golden Helix and called for abstracts using DNA-Seq, RNA-seq, GWAS, or CNV methodology. Over 50 submissions were received from more than 20 different countries utilizing both microarray and sequencing data and included human, animal, and plant studies.

"We were incredibly impressed not only of the amount, but also by the quality of the abstracts we received," said Andreas Scherer, President and CEO of Golden Helix. "This speaks highly of the research being done in the genetic community, as well as the results our customers get leveraging SVS for their work. It was quite difficult to select the winners. As a result, we decided to double the amount of prizes we had originally advertised."

Golden Helix named two first place, two second place, and two third place winners and awarded over $30,000 in hardware and software prizes.

First place was awarded to both Dr. Heather Huson at Cornell University and John Eicher at Yale University. Huson's research uses candidate gene and whole genome analysis to explore energy balance in dairy cattle as optimal energy balance is critical to yield and production. Eicher has conducted GWAS research that seeks to determine if an association exists between reading disability and language impairment in humans. Both Huson and Eicher won a new laptop loaded with SNP & Variation Suite (SVS) and a copy of SVS for a colleague.

The second place winners were Dr. Kenneth Kaufman of Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and EunRan Suh of the University of Pennsylvania. The third place winners were Dr. Mark Barash of Bond University in Australia and Dr. Brian Davis of the National Human Genome Research Institute.

Each winner will be presenting their research to the Golden Helix community via a complimentary webcast in the coming months.

"Golden Helix is committed to enabling genetic discovery," said Scherer. "This competition allowed us to recognize researchers who are currently making an impact in the field. We look forward to making this an annual event."

SNP & Variation Suite is an integrated collection of powerful analytic tools for managing, analyzing, and visualizing multifaceted genomic and phenotypic data. Applications include candidate gene analysis, genome-wide association studies, copy number analysis, cytogenetic research, and next-generation sequencing studies.


About Golden Helix
Golden Helix has been delivering industry leading bioinformatics solutions for the advancement of life science research and translational medicine for over 15 years. Our innovative technologies and analytic services empower scientists and healthcare professionals at all levels to derive meaning from the rapidly increasing volumes of genomic data produced from microarrays and next-generation sequencing. With our solutions, hundreds of the world’s top pharmaceutical, biotech, and academic research organizations are able to harness the full potential of genomics to identify the cause of disease, improve the efficacy and safety of drugs, develop genomic diagnostics, and advance the quest for personalized medicine. Golden Helix products and services have been cited in over 800 peer-reviewed publications.


Jessica Vionas
Director of Marketing
Golden Helix, Inc.
406-999-0175
vionas@goldenhelix.com