The Hope Center for Neurological Disorders is a leading interdisciplinary collaboration promoting translational research. The Center hosts an annual retreat to present the latest fi ndings and future directions of member labs in the context of short talks and a poster session, as well as external invited speakers. The eighth annual Hope Center Retreat included two posters from the Climer Lab here at UMSL. Graduate Research Assistant M ichael Chan presented an innovative linear -pro gramming approach to identify combinations of genetic markers associated with complex diseases, with an application for Alzheimer’s Disease. Graduate Research Assistant Aditya Karnam Gururaj Rao presented a novel genetic -programming algorithm for identifying clusters in networks, which is also of value for identifying combinations of genetic markers associated with complex diseases, including Alzheimer’s Disease.

Computer Science graduate student, Michael Chan, presenting his linear-programming research.

Computer Science graduate student, Aditya Karnam Gururaj Rao, presenting his genetic-algorithm research.