A Life Technologies-sponsored 2-day conference called Ion World 2012 kicked off yesterday afternoon, with Jonathan Rothberg founder of Ion Torrent, Tim Triche of the Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles, Joe Boland of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at the National Cancer Institute, Shawn Levy of Hudson-Alpha Biotechnology Institute, and Craig Venter from Synthetic Genomics and the J. Craig Venter Institute all speaking.