View ISCB Regional Affiliates and other Regional Groups by Continent or Country (select a location from the list here to view the corresponding location below): [AFRICA]; [ASIA]: [INDIA], [ISRAEL], [JAPAN], [KOREA], [TAIWAN]; [EUROPE]: [CZECH REPUBLIC]: [FRANCE], [ITALY], [GERMANY], [NETHERLANDS], [SCANDINAVIA], [UNITED KINGDOM]; [SOUTH AMERICA]: [BRAZIL]; [NORTH AMERICA], [MEXICO], [CANADA], [UNITED STATES]

Regional Affiliates of ISCB are groups involving people from a specific region representing various institutions and/or organizations involved in the advancement of bioinformatics. Such groups have regular meetings either in person or online, and an organizing body in the form of a board of directors or steering committee. If you are interested in affiliating your regional group with the ISCB, please review these guidelines and then contact BJ Morrison McKay (bj@iscb.org) if you believe group meets the eligibility requirements.

Access to societies which span more than a single region is available through the ISCB Resources section.

http://www.asbcb.org

• Promote the exchange of ideas, infrastructure and resources in the fields of bioinformatics and computational biology and facilitate the interaction and collaboration among scientists and educators around the world.
• Measurably advance the awareness and understanding of the science of bioinformatics and computational biology. The society represents the bioinformatics and computational biology community in Africa and will be the most respected and reliable international non-profit organization representing this community.

• Be a scholarly society dedicated to advancing, developing and promoting bioinformatics and computational biology in Africa.
• Serve a global membership by impacting government and scientific policies, providing high quality publications and meetings, and through distribution of valuable information about training, education, employment and relevant news from related fields.
• Develop the application of bioinformatics in Africa in collaboration with individuals, groups and organizations

• Identify, promote and establish opportunities for networking.
• Encourage and develop bioinformatics and computational biology nodes.
• Increase awareness and promote the use of bioinformatics and computational biology.
• Facilitate access to bioinformatics and computational biology infrastructure.
• Promote bioinformatics and computational biology education.

• Malaria
• Tuberculosis
• Trypanosomas
• HIV AIDS

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http://www.apbionet.org/
Contact: Dr Tan Tin Wee, Founding Convenor, tinwee@bic.nus.edu.sg
Geographical area included: Asia Pacific
Goal: Fostering the Growth of Bioinformatics and allied disciplines in the Asia Pacific region

Structure: Dr S Subbiah (President)
Dr Shoba Ranganathan (Vice President)
Dr Tan Tin Wee (Secretariat)

Founded: 1998

Membership: APBioNet h as more than 20 organizational and 300 individual members from over 12 countries in the region, and members include those from industry, academia, research, government, investors and international organizations. Members join by online registration, and receive a wide range of services and benefits including APBioNet fellowships, opportunities to participate in APBioNet endorsed events such as InCoB (International Conference on Bioinformatics) and APBC (Asia Pacific Bioinformatics Conference).

Information infrastructure: Mailing list
http://www.apbionet.org/list.shtml

Activities planned and/or past:APBioNet has coordinated or co-organized more than 20 international and national meetings in cooperation with members in different economies. InCoB (International Conference on Bioinformatics) will be held in 2004 by Allen Rodrigo in Auckland, and APBC (Asia Pacific Bioinformatics Conference) will be held in 2004 coordinated by Phoebe Chen, also in Auckland. APBioNet also provides various services such as BioMirror project with APAN (Asia Pacific Advanced Network) as well as APBioBox (a suite of shrink-wrapped software) a project funded by IDRC Canada. We are also active in ASEAN nations, particularly acting as liaison for the ASEAN Committee on Science and Technology's Subcommittee on Biotechnology.

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URL: http://www.ambis.org.sg
Contact(s): (name(s) and email address(es))
Quek Hui Nar (President): huinar@dbmi.columbia.edu
Olivo Miotto (Vice-President): olivo@iss.nus.edu.sg

Geographical area included: Singapore
Goal/Mission:
- Provide a forum of discussion for bioinformatics and medical informatics
- Promote collaboration and exchange among Singapore bioinformatics and medical informatics practitioners through the organisation of conferences, meetings, seminars, workshops, symposia every year
- Stimulate collaboration between practitioners and scientists of different backgrounds
- Provide training in medical and bioinformatics

Leadership:
(names of board members and/or officers/steering committee)
President: Quek Hui Nar
Vice-President: Olivo Miotto
Secretary: Dr Walter Lim
Treasurer: Suryani Lukman
Committee Member: Christopher J.O. Baker
Committee Member: Dr Tan Yung Ming
Advisory Board Member: A/Prof Tan Tin Wee
Advisory Board Member: Prof Lun Kwok Chan

Year founded and brief history (1-3 sentences) of how the group was formed:
The predecessor organisation of AMBIS was AIMS, founded in 1985, originally with a scope limited to health informatics. With the advent of Bioinformatics, and to regularise the fact that many of its members are bioinformatics practitioners, the association has succeeded in changing its constitution and having it approved and ratified by the Registrar of Societies, Singapore this year, i.e. 2003. Activities proposed or carried out:

The group plans to continue organising meetings that include both medical and bioinformatics, as well as separate meetings focussed on either medical informatics or bioinformatics and computational biology. Past activities included a bioinformatics symposium, an annual lecture by expert speakers in bioinformatics and/or medical informatics. We have sponsored members to attend a number of meetings in medical informatics and bioinformatics and will continue to do so, via our modest travel fellowship scheme.

The AMBIS website is now co-hosted with the APBioNet website, and in future, we anticipate to collaborate with APBioNet to spearhead new initiatives such as providing a testbed for the APBioBox software package (including the Globus Grid toolkit) for Linux platforms, in an easily installable and configurable form for developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region, collaborate with Sun Microsystems to launch the Sun BioBox for Solaris (which includes the Sun Grid Engine) and work closely with the bioinformatics research groups in Singapore.

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http://www.bioinformatics-india.com
Contact: Ashwin Naik anaik@triesta.com
Leadership: Dr. Ashwin Naik

History: Bioinformatics-india.com was founded in March 2000, when interest in bioinformatics was surging throughout the world. Indian bioinformatics professionals needed a single platform to interact, share ideas and discuss issues and developments related to bioinformatics.

Membership size and services: 2000+ members, regular e-updates, personalised
space and news about bioinformatics, jobs/resume databaseActivities planned and/or past: National Bioinformatics Conference in July 2004.
Goal: To Provide a Hub for Bioinformatics Professionals of Indian Origin

Geographical area included: India

Mailing Address: 14120 Castle Blvd #101, Silverspring, MD 20904, USA

Structure & Activities: Bioinformatics in India has no official or elected leadership. It is run as a virtual group, with all activites including discussions and exchange of ideas online. Users can signup for free through the online registration form.

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http://www.inbios.org
Contacts: Dr. Krishna S. Deshpande, Secretary, Bioinformatics Society of India, Director, Institute of Bioinformatics, Discoverer 7th Floor, International Tech Park Ltd. Whitefield Road, Bangalore - 560 066, INDIA, ksdeshpande@ibioinformatics.org
Dr. Akhilesh Pandey (President) (pandey@jhmi.edu)
Mr. Ashwin Sivakumar (Founder and Group Coordinator) (Ashwin.Sivakumar@helsinki.fi)
Phone: (+91) 80-8416140, Fax: (+91) 80-8416132
Goals: Bioinformatics Society of India, or Inbios, is a non-profit society dedicated to promoting and creating excellence in the emerging field of bioinformatics in India.This society is aimed at making Bioinformatics a long term success in India. The current growing interests and trends will have serious repercussions in the years to come. This society is basically aimed at being a bridge between the Educational and Corporate sector. It will strive towards catering the needs of the aspiring learners of this field by creating a genuine awareness and to attain perfection to set a benchmark in Bioinformatics. Right now the focus for India should be on building a stable building block in Bioinformatics so that we are considered a major research hub for this field in the near future. Inbios runs as an informal and voluntary group and thus does not make any monetary profits from the activities carried out.

Membership: We invite both International and Indian Bioinformatics community alike to be a part of the Society and it is an effective way for both group learning and to be informed about Indian Bioinformatics scenario. There is a prospective members' mailing list at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/inbios

Applications will be screened for membership to the Society (Individual-student/otherwise, academic, corporate). We expect inspired contributions and participance from students and individuals since it is a completely Voluntary Society. Membership will be screened regularly on this basis.

Structure: President (elected yearly from among the existing board by planning committee and board with input from chapters and Society members), Secretary (elected by President, Planning Committee and Society members), Founder, Co-founder and founding members become a part of the planning committee, Board members are elected every year by planning committee after input from chapters, Planning Committee are Inbios patrons, whose suggestions and ideas will be discussed at the level of board and will be considered and implemented by the president. There will be a chief volunteer amongst this committee who finally takes a discussed issue to the president. They are permanent and additive. A planning committee member can get elected in the Board and vice-a-versa. Treasury is either from the planning committee or board, and they are elected by the Society members. In addition there are Mediators elected yearly by the president and Chapter Representatives appointed yearly by the Planning Committee, President and mediators.
Dr. Akhilesh Pandey (Institute of Bioinformatics, Bangalore) is the current President and Dr. Krishna Deshpandey is the Secretary.

Inbios- Bioinformatics Society of India has now almost been restructured. We are a registered Society committed towards development of the field in India and hope to be a bridge between the Academic and Corporate sectors and moreover between the International and Indian Bioinformatics. International Chapters are in the form of US and European Chapters. Regional Chapters which are either existent or being introduced are Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Chandigarh and Pune. Calcutta is being considered. We identify regional chapters based on priority areas for this field. People from other regions may opt/contact the nearest chapter. Each chapter has an assigned Mediator and separate page within our website.

Activities: * Newsletters * Biomeet (A live web discussion with an Invited Guest on a Bioinformatics related topic) * Conferences and Workshops * Chapter meetings * Busy discussion forum and mailing list: (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/inbios/)
We have introduced new concepts like the upcoming newsletter (Bioinformatica), virtual journal club (Vijoc) and specialist talks by selected Inbiosians (italk). Upcoming Biomeet will be on "Inbios and its international presence". Further details on time and date will be up shortly (website and prospective members' mailing list). We expect prospective members to participate in such activities not only because they are unique opportunity to discuss issues and meet the Bioinformatics community but also because memberships are reviewed regularly based on reasonable participation and contributions to our activities. Past activities include Brainstorm 2003 - A major event planned by the INBIOS team, the event had quality talks by the Industry and Academia invitees and had a moderated discussion forum which also involved participation from over 200 people; Bioinformatics Threshold: 2002 - The first INBIOS event having a media presence. It had more than 150 participants. It comprised of quality talks from Academia and Industry people along with an hands-on workshop on Bioinformatics methodologies; Primer Workshop in Bioinformatics (PWIB) 2002 - PWIB happens to be the first event to be hosted by INBIOS. It attracted more than 50 participants.

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http://www.weizmann.ac.il/ISBCB/

Geographical area included: Israel
Goal/Mission: The primary goals of the ISBCB are:

• To promote research and teaching in Israel in the fields of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
• To link academic and government agencies and research institutes in Israel where research in the fields is conducted
• To link the Israeli society and other similar societies around the world

History: The first Israeli Bioinformatics Symposium (IBS) was held in 1995. The Society was founded in early 2002, with the first membership signup at the meeting in May of that year. The Society is a member of the Federation of Israeli Societies for Experimental Biology and is registered as a non-profit organization.

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URL: http://www.jsbi.org/

Contact:
Name : Ms. Asako Suzuki (JSBi Officer)
Email: jimu@jsbi.org
Phone: +81-3-5793-4431
Fax : +81-3-5793-4432

Geographical area included: Japan

Goal/Mission:
The purpose of JSBi is to perform research in bioinformatics, conduct investigations into its techniques, and exchange research and knowledge in the field in order to promote these and related activities, as well as contribute to the field's educational base.

Leadership:
President: Kenta Nakai (April 2006 - March 2007)(term: 1 year)
Vice President: Yutaka Akiyama (April 2006 - March 2007)(term: 1 year)

Board of Directors (20 members, term: 2 years)
Term 2004/04/01/ - 2006/03/31
Ken Aoshima (Mitsui Knowledge Industry Co., Ltd.)
Minoru Kanehisa (Kyoto University)
Hiroaki Kitano (The Systems Biology Institute)
Takashi Komori (INTEC Web and Genome Informatics Corp.)
Kazuyuki Shimizu (Kyushu Institute of Technology)
Toshihisa Takagi (University of Tokyo)
Masaru Tomita (Keio University)
Shinsei Minoshima (Hamamatsu University School of Medicine)
Shinichi Morishita (University of Tokyo)
Hiroshi Wako (Waseda University)

Term 2005/04/01 - 2007/03/31
Yutaka Akiyama (Computational Biology Research Center)
Masanori Arita (University of Tokyo)
Akihiko Konagaya (RIKEN)
Susumu Goto (Kyoto University)
Yasubumi Sakakibara (Keio University)
Hiroshi Tanaka (Tokyo Medical & Dental University)
Hiroyuki Toh (Kyoto University)
Tetsuo Nishikawa (Reverse Proteomics Research Inst. Co., Ltd.)
Hiroshi Matsuno (Yamaguchi University)
Hiroshi Mamitsuka (Kyoto University)

Term 2006/04/01 - 2008/03/31
Masato Kitajima (Fujitsu Kyushu Systems Engineering Ltd.)
Takashi Gojobori (National Institute of Genetics)
Tsuneaki Sakata (Osaka University)
Kentaro Shimizu (University of Tokyo)
Gozo Tsujimoto (Kyoto University)
Kenta Nakai (University of Tokyo) Nozomi Nagano
(Computational Biology Research Center)
Mika Hirakawa (Kyoto University)
Junji Fukumoto (SGI Japan, Ltd.)
Satoru Miyano (University of Tokyo)

Method of electing or selecting leader(s):
The members of Board of Directors are elected by the members of JSBi.
The President is elected by the members of Board of Directors.
The Vice President is appointed by the president.

History:
JSBi was founded on 11 December, 1999. Minoru Kanehisa inaugurated as the first president of JSBi. JSBi was mainly formed by the members involved with the Genome Informatics Project.

Membership size and benefits:
JSBi currently has 700 individual members and 39 corporate members There is a dues structure which entitles members to the following benefits: Reduced registration fee at the International Conference on Genome Informatics (GIW) Free admission to JSBi SIG meetings Right to attend JSBi Summer School Right to use the JSBi mailing list for academic and commercial annoucements Student travel support for the GIW, ISMB, PSB, and RECOMB conferences

Activities planned and/or past:
Conferences The International Conference on Genome Informatics (Annual meeting: http://giw.ims.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ )

Publications
Genome Informatics Series News Letters (2 issues per year)
Encycropedia of Bioinformatics (scheduled to be published in 2005)
Educational Activities JSBi Summer School (2003 - )
Bioinformatics Curriculum Committee
The proposal for Bioinformatics Education Curriculum was made in 2002.
The Bioinformatics Education Curriculum is under revision since 2004.
Special Interest Group
Special Interest Group on Systems Biology (2003 - )
Special Interest Group on Biological Information Network (2003 - )
Special Interest Group on Pharma Informatics (2004 - )
Special Interest Group on Ontology (2005 - )
Special Interest Group on Simulation (2000 - 2004)
International Collaboration

The First Symposium on Associations of Asian Societies for Bioinformatics (AASBi), Pacifico Yokohama, Japan, December 13, 2003. JSBi is a member of AASBi. Satoru Miyano was elected as the first president of AASBi for the year 2004.

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http://www.ksbi.org
Contact: Cheolmin Kim, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor, Laboratory of Genomic Medicine Department of Biochemistry, College of Medicine, Pusan National University, #10 Amidong-1-ga, Seogu, Busan, 602-739, Korea
Tel 82-51-240-7725 (O), 82-51-242-4828 (L), Fax 82-51-248-1118, E-mail: kimcm@pusan.ac.kr

S. June O, Ph.D. Head, Bioinformatics team / BRIC, TEL: +82-2-880-5890 / FAX: +82-2-883-9120, E-mail: sjo@bric.postech.ac.kr

Su Jung Kim, Researcher, Biological Research Information Center (BRIC) TEL: 82-54-279-8196, Fax: 82-54-279-5540

Geographical area included: Korea

Goal/mission:

• Promotion of bioinformatics research and development in Korea
• Sponsoring bioinformatics-related academic events such as symposia, workshops, discussion forums, etc in Korea
• Participation in basic and advanced bioinformatics education in Korea
• Supporting technological and industrial development in the area of bioinformatics in Korea

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http://dblab8.csie.ncu.edu.tw/ (in Chinese)
Contact: yang@ym.edu.tw

Goals: to promote the interaction of biologists and nonbiologist; to promote bioinformatics in Taiwan

Structure:

Chairman: Cheng-Yen Kao
Standing board members: Ueng-Cheng Yang, Chao Hsiung
Regular board members: 8
Treasure monitoring committee
Standing member: Johnsee Lee
Regular member: 2

Secretary: Jorng-Tzong Horng
Method of election: At annual meeting (If there are not sufficient members present in the meeting, mail-election is also acceptable.)
Method of renewal: Every other year. The chairman can at most be elected twice in series. The board members does not have any restriction.

Geographical area included: Taiwan

Information infrastructure: electronic bulletin boards
http://binfo.ym.edu.tw/idg/ (English & Chinese mixed)
http://domino.tmu.edu.tw/bioinfo.nsf/ (English & Chinese mixed)

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http://fobia.img.cas.cz/
Contact: Dr. Metej Lexa
E-mail: lexa@fi.muni.cz
Geographical area included: Czech Republic

Year founded: 2004

Goals and history: The main goal of the FOBIA group is to facilitate contacts and exchange of ideas among Czech scientists interested or working in bioinformatics, mainly by the means of workshops, meetings and lectures.

Leadership structure: President and Secretary voted at general assembly

Membership: FOBIA is a section of the Czech Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; the FOBIA section currently totals ~25 members. All dues are paid to the Czech Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Application for membership is by e-mail, with the member admitted upon giving a lecture about his/her field of research, usually at the annual meeting.

Past and planned activities: Series of lectures in Prague (ongoing)

• 1st annual meeting in Sv.Jan pod Skalou (2005)
• 2nd annual meeting in Telc (2006)
• 3rd annual meeting (2007)

URL: http://www.bioinformatics.it

Contact: Bioinformatics Italian Society
Sezione di Genomica e Bioinformatica dell’Istituto Tecnologie Biomediche del CNR
Via Amendola 122/d
70126 Bari
E-mail: bits@bioinformatics.it

Geographical area included: Italy

Goals: The main goals of the BITS are to provide a forum of discussion for bioinformatics, promote collaboration and exchange among the Italian groups working in bioinformatics, organize a meeting each year, stimulate collaboration between scientists of different backgrounds (biologists, informaticians, physicists, mathematicians and others), establish or maintain good collaboration and links with the other international societies with similar scientific interests.

The Bioinformatics ITalian Society (BITS) promotes the following topics:
* Bioinformatics as academic research,
* Bioinformatics in technology and industry,
* Bioinformatics in basic and advanced education.

Leadership:
President
Graziano Pesole (University of Bari)

Councillors
Raffaele A Calogero (University of Torino)
Rita Casadio (University of Bologna)
Michele Caselle (University of Torino)
Marilù Chiusano (University of Napoli)
Manuela Helmer-Citterich (Secretary, University of Rome Tor Vergata)
Elisabetta Pizzi (Treasurer, Istituto Superiore Sanità Roma)

Honorary President
Cecilia Saccone (University of Bari)

Year founded and brief history: The group was founded in 1999, and since then we have been meeting once a year.

Membership size and services: 250 members

Activities planned and/or past: From 1999-2003 we met annually as "Gruppo di Cooperazione Bioinformatica"
(see http://cbm.bio.uniroma2.it/biocomp/ ) to discuss informally about our work as well as the latest developments in bioinformatics. In 2004 we decided to continue very informally, but at the same time we thought that it was better to organise ourselves in a proper scientific society, BITS with defined aims, rules and, most important, an annual assembly to decide together the direction to go. The BIT Annual Conference was held in Padua (2004), Milan (2005), Bologna (2006) and Napoli (2007).

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German Informatics Society (GI): http://www.gi-ev.de/
Professional Group - Informatics for Life Sciences (PG):
http://www.cebitec.uni-bielefeld.de/groups/fg402/
Contacts: Chair of PG Dr. Uta Bohnebeck, bohnebeck@ttz-bremerhaven.de; Vice chair of PG Prof. Dr. Jens Stoye, stoye@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de; GI office: Jörg Maas,  maas@gi-ev.de
Mailing addresses:

• Dr. Uta Bohnebeck; TTZ Bremerhaven; An der Karlstadt 10; D-27568 Bremerhaven; GERMANY
• German Informatics Society; Office, Jörg Maas; Wissenschaftszentrum; Ahrstraße 45; D-53175 Bonn; GERMANY

Goals:The German Informatics Society is a non-profit organisation with the aim to advance the research, training and application of informatics. In this context the professional group, Informatics for Life Sciences, seeks to stimulate collaboration between scientists of different backgrounds in order to promote theoretical and practical support for the life sciences. The group is interested in close collaborations with similar societies in other contries.

Structure:
Elected Board Members of the Professional Group - Informatics for Life Sciences (PG)
Chair: Dr. Uta Bohnebeck, bohnebeck@ttz-bremerhaven.de
Vice-chair: Prof. Dr. Jens Stoye, stoye@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
Members of the board: Prof. Dr. Ralf Hofestädt, hofestae@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Lenhof, len@bioinf.uni-saarland.de
Prof. Dr. Thomas Martinetz, martinetz@informatik.uni-luebeck.de
PD Dr. Thomas Werner, werner@gsf.de

Brief history of when and how group formed: The professional group was founded with the first symposium about, Information Gain in Biosystems, 1992 in Bonn.

Geographical area included: German language area, in particular Germany
Members: GI: about 24.000; PG: 336

Activities planned and/or past: The professional group organises the annual German Conference on Bioinformatics (GCB) established in 1985. In 2002 this conference was held jointly with the first European Conference on Computational Biology (www.eccb2002.de). Since 2000 three Summer School Bioinformatics have been taken place initialised by the group (http://www.zbit.uni-tuebingen.de/biss2002/).

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http://www.socbin.org/
Contact:
Arne Elofsson, President arne@sbc.su.se
Inge Jonassen, Vice President inge@ii.uib.no

Goals: To promote bioinformatics activities within all the Nordic countries (including the Baltic states and Poland). The most important issue should be a yearly conference that should alternate in between the different countries. The society should have an active interaction with ISCB - International Society for Computational biology.

History: SocBiN was formally founded in 2000 during the Bioinformatics '00 Conference, in an effort to form a society that would give long term stability, instead of ad hoc solutions, and facilitate external and internal interactions among bioinformaticians in the Nordic region.

Structure:
* Arne Elofsson, president, 2004--2007, Stockholm University, Sweden arne@sbc.su.se, http://www.sbc.su.se/~arne
* Inge Jonassen, vice president, 2002--2005, University of Bergen, Norway inge@ii.uib.no, http://www.ii.uib.no/~inge
* Christian Ahrens, 2004--2007, MDS Proteomics, Odense, Denmark cahrens@mdsdenmark.com
* Nikolaj Blom, 2004--2007, Danish Technical University, Lyngby, Denmark nikob@cbs.dtu.dk
* Janusz Bujnacki, 2004--2007, International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Warsaw, Poland iamb@genesilico.pl
* Jens Lagergren, 2003--2006, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden jensl@nada.kth.se, http://www.nada.kth.se/~jensl/
* David Liberles, 2003---2006, University of Bergen, Norway liberles@cbu.uib.no, http://www.cbu.uib.no/liberles
* Maido Remm, 2003--2006, Tartu University, Estonia mremm@ut.ee
* Tapio Salakoski , 2004--2007, University of Turku, Finland tapio.salakoski@it.utu.fi, http://www.it.utu.fi/henkilosto/info/?id=7
* Gudmundur Thorissen, 2004--2007, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, USA/Iceland mummi@cshl.org
* Mauno Vihinen 2003--2006, University of Tampere, Finland mauno.vihinen@uta.fi, http://www.uta.fi/imt/bioinfo/vihinen.html

Geographical area included: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, and Sweden (Nordic and Baltic countries).
Size: 500 active members

Activities past and planned: SocBiN's sixth annual Bioinformatics Conference will be held June 3-6, 2004, in Linköping, Sweden. The previous conference venues have been Lund, Sweden (April 1999), Helsingør, Denmark (April 2000), Skövde, Sweden (April 2001), Bergen, Norway (April 2002), and Helsinki, Finland (May 2003). The conference currently draws 300-400 attendees.

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http://www.bio.vu.nl/nvtb/
Contact: Bob Kooikooi, Kooi kooi@bio.vu.nl

Mailing Address: Theoretische Biologie, Vrije Universiteit, De Boelelaan 1087, 1081 HV Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS

Structure:
Voorzitter Bob Kooikooi Kooi kooi@bio.vu.nl
Secretary Yuri Robbers robbers@rulsfb.leidenuniv.nl
Penningmeester Sander van Doorn doorngs@biol.rug.nl

Geographical area included: Netherlands

Newsletter: http://www.bio.vu.nl/nvtb/Mailing_list.html#news

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http://www.mgms.org/
Contact: enquiries@mgms.org

Mailing Address: Dr. P. Bamborough; Glaxo Smithkline Research Centre; Gunnels Wood Road; Stevenage, Herts SG1 2NY; UK

Officers:
Chairman - Catherine Burt, Pfizer
Secretary - Mark Rodger, University of Warwick
Treasurer - James Woolven, GlaxoSmithKline
Membership Secretary - Paul Bamborough, GlaxoSmithKline
Journal Editor - Rod Hubbard, University of York

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Structure: Governing Board
President: Junior Barrera
Vice-President: Paula Kuser Falcao
First Secretary: Guilherme Oliveira
Second Secretary: Osmar Norberto de Souza
First Treasurer: Sandro Jose de Souza
Second Treasurer: Rita Zorzenon

Headquarter Address:
Hospital Alemão Oswaldo Cruz.
R. João Julião, 245, 1° andar
Paraíso - São Paulo, SP, Brazil
CEP: 01323-903
Telefone: (11) 35490475 - Fax: (11) 31411325

Geographical Area Included:
Brazil and Latina American Countries

Historical:
The Brazilian Association for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology has been officially registered in October 2004 after two years of co-existence and maturation period within the forum at the International Conference on Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (ICoBiCoBi). This Association was established as an attempt to integrate our research
community. The Association's main goal is to make easier the complex task of training young scientists interested in Bioinformatics. Furthermore, the Association is supposed to give a full support to the organization of the ISMB 2006, which is going to be held in Fortaleza. This is a crucial opportunity for the Brazilian Bioinformatics community to continue its successful process of integration into the international scenario.

Goals:
The AB3C adopted the ISCB goal list as its own;
The AB3C serves a Brazilian and Latin American membership by impacting government and scientific policies, providing high quality publications and meetings, and through distribution of valuable information about training, education, employment and relevant news from related fields.

Membership:
The AB3C counts on potential membership between 400 and 800. This is based on numbers we have obtained in previous two ICoBiCoBi conferences as well as on interest from some Latin American Countries.

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http://www.bayareabioinformatics.org
Contact:
Steve Madden steve@bayareabioinformatics.org
Daryl Thomas daryl@bayareabioinformatics.org
Vicky Markstein vicky@bayareabioinformatics.org
Mailing Address: 1089 West Parr Avenue, Campbell, CA 95008-6410, USA

Geographical area included: San Francisco Bay Area

Goal/Mission: Bay Area Bioinformatics is an organization open to all members of the San Francisco Bay Area who have an interest in the field of Bioinformatics. The purposes of the organization are to represent the local community of bioinformatics professionals; to provide a monthly forum for the presentation of current developments in bioinformatics and other topics of interest; to promote professional and career development in bioinformatics, by encouraging educational programs and the dissemination of job opportunities; and to foster communication among the diverse community of professionals who work in bioinformatics and related fields.

Structure: Monthly Meetings

Leadership: The Steering Committee is comprised of Steve Madden, Daryl Thomas and Vicky Markstein

History: Bay Area Bioinformatics Discussion Group was formed in December 1999. Some members of the U.C. Santa Cruz Extension Bioinformatics Advisory Board perceived the need for a regular forum to exchange ideas in bioinformatics. At the first meeting, a Steering Committee was recruited which oversees BAB.

Membership size and services:
~1000 on Announcements email list, monthly meeting attendance at Stanford University from 60-100. Sponsor BABioinformatics@yahoogroups.com Yahoo! group
Consultants Directory (Bay Area presence required)
Company Directory (Bay Area presence required)

Activities planned and/or past: Monthly speaker meeting (see http://www.bayareabioinformatics.org/meetings.html for upcoming meeting information as well as complete listing of past meetings including abstracts from nearly all meetings since December 2000. BAB also holds an annual special event

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http://genetics.mgh.harvard.edu/bambct
Contact: Lance Davidow bambctadm@molbio.mgh.harvard.edu
Geographical area included: Metropolitan Boston, MA USA
Goal/Mission: Bioinformatics and Computer usage in Molecular Biology
Leadership: (steering committee) Lance Davidow, Norbert Kremer, Matt Temple

History: Founded in approximately 1990 by Mike Cherry, Will Gilbert and Dave Merberg as a support group of academic and biotech molecular biologists using and administering the Genetics Computer Group program suite on DEC Vax computers. Expanded into all phases of bioinformatics including genomics and proteomics and the associated instrumentation and computer hardware.

Membership size: 104 members on email list

Activities planned and/or past: Monthly informal gatherings. Seminars, workshops and vendor demonstrations scheduled on an ad hoc basis. Serves as knowledge source and mutual support via email.

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http://www.cvbig.org
Contact: Eric Engelhard eric@mail.cvbig.org
Mailing Address: CVBIG c/o Eric Engelhard, 704 Hudson Street, Davis, CA 95616
Geographical area included: Greater Sacramento Area, California
Goal/Mission: The Central Valley Bioinformatics Interest Group is a collection of
biologists and programmers using and developing bioinformatic tools to solve problems in fields ranging from gene discovery to directed evolution, diagnostics, and targeted therapy. Members come from both academic and industrial laboratories where they work on the bench or at the workstation. We present our work, ask questions, share tips and tricks, or just hang out at our monthly meetings. CVBIG also maintains a multiple mail lists. Membership is free and open to all.

Leadership: none

History: CVBIG evolved from a semi-regular meeting of four biologists actively using and/or creating bioformatics methods. The club was born out of a desire to attract more researchers from local industry and the UC Davis campus.
Membership size: >200 email list members, ~20 active meeting
Attendees. Sign up to the mailing list at http://www.cvbig.org/mailman/listinfo/cvbig

Activities planned and/or past: monthly meetings (see http://www.cvbig.org/meetings/ for upcoming and past meeting details)

Structure: Monthly Meetings

Mailing List: http://www.cvbig.org/mailman/listinfo/cvbig

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http://www.greatlakesbioinformatics.org/
Contact: Christyne Bliton, acbliton@umich.edu
Goals: The Great Lakes Bioinformatics Consortium was created for the advancement and collaboration of experts in the field of advanced Bioinformatics, and to foster knowledge sharing with other Universities and private industry. GLBC serves bioinformatics groups in the Great Lakes regions of the U.S. and Canada.

Leadership:
President & Chairman: David States, M.D., Ph.D., UM Bioinformatics
Vice President: Brian Athey, Ph.D., MCBI
Secretary: TBD
Treasurer: Christyne Bliton, M.S., MCBI

Board members: Invitations/appointments in process

Method of election: Officers are elected by the Board of Directors. Board of Directors are nominated and elected by the membership. (Note the first set of officers and board of directors were selected by Dr. States & Athey, until elections can be held at the 3rd Annual Great Lakes Bioinformatics retreat, August of 2004.)

Method of renewal: Self-renewing board with annual elections

Geographical area included: Great Lakes regions of the U.S. and Canada

History: The GLBC was founded in 2003 through a collaboration of the University of Michigan’s Bioinformatics program, directed by Dr. David States, and the Michigan Center for Biological Information (MCBI), directed by Dr. Brian Athey. MCBI is a state-wide bioinformatics and bio-IT organization with members from University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Wayne State University, and the Van Andel Research Institute (www.ctaalliance.org ). The GLBC initial membership was drawn from academic and biotech attendees of the 2nd Annual Great Lakes Bioinformatics Retreat.

Membership size and benefits: Yearly retreats are attended by > 75 members. The retreats supply networking and internship opportunities. Small informal meetings are held by groups with common interests.
Membership dues: Retreat fees cover membership dues.

Previous Activities: 2nd Annual Great Lakes Bioinformatics Retreats, 2003

Planned Activities:
3rd Annual Great Lakes Bioinformatics Retreat, August 2004. The GLBC’s core activity is an annual retreat, which is meant to be an opportunity for graduate students and post-doctoral fellows to present their most current work in bioinformatics and computational biology, and to network with researchers from academia and industry from the Great Lakes region. It is also meant to be an opportunity for Great Lakes researchers to identify potential collaborative opportunities and to develop special interest groups. The first of these groups to develop is a cluster computing sig. National speakers are recruited from academia and biotech to give their views of the future in bioinformatics. In addition, organizational meetings for the GLBC are held at the retreat.
ISMB 2005, Detroit, Michigan. The UM Bioinformatics Program under Dr. David States is working with the GLBC and MCBI to host ISMB 2005. We are excited about the prospect of growing GLBC through this activity.

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http://www.MCBIOS.org
Contacts: Bill Slikker < wslikker@nctr.fda.gov >
Geographic Area Included: MidSouth region of the US. This loosely includes the states of: Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee (western), and Texas (eastern)
Goals: The mission of MCBIOS is to foster networking and collaboration, and promote the professional development of the members. We have a strong orientation toward supporting our student members.

Leadership Structure
Yuriy Gusev, Director (thru 2007)
Steven F. Jennings, Past President (thru 2005)
Andre Ptitsyn, Director (thru 2006)
William Slikker, Jr. (Bill), President (thru 2006)
Weida Tong, Treasurer (thru 2005)
Dawn Wilkins, Secretary (thru 2006)
Stephen Winters-Hilt, President-Elect (thru 2007)
Jonathan Wren, Director (thru 2005)
Roger Young, Director (thru 2007)

History:
MCBIOS was formed in 2003 and is sponsored by the MidSouth Bioinformatics Center which is supported by the Arkansas BRIN/INBRE program from the National Institutes of Health, and by the CyberCollege at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Activities planned and/or past: 
Third Annual MCBIOS Conference in Baton Rouge, LA, on November 17-19, 2005.

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www.okbios.org
Contact(s):
President: Jonathan Wren, Ph.D. - Jonathan.Wren@OU.edu
Vice-President: Yuriy Gusev, Ph.D. - Yuriy-Gusev@OUHSC.edu

Goal/Mission: Foster networking and collaboration for researchers and students interested in bioinformatics, whether from a theoretical standpoint (i.e. advancing bioinformatics methods/techniques/research) or an applied one (i.e. using existing methods/techniques). On a more day-to-day basis, we hope to develop a web portal that is of use to students/post-doctoral fellows seeking jobs and research opportunities as well as faculty members seeking funding, training materials, and potential sources of collaboration.

Geographical area: Oklahoma

Structure:
Officers:
President: Jonathan Wren, Ph.D. - Jonathan.Wren@OU.edu
Vice-President: Yuriy Gusev, Ph.D. - Yuriy-Gusev@OUHSC.edu

Candidates for officer positions are nominated by members, candidates need to have at least 2 nominations to be considered for office. Members then vote on all candidates for each officer position in an open forum by raising their hands, and officers are elected by popular vote.

History:
Founded April 28, 2004 by Jonathan Wren and Yuriy Gusev.
Informatics-based components to conducting biomedical research are becoming more prevalent world-wide and Oklahoma is no exception, having a world-class genome sequencing facility at OU, microarray facilities at OU, OSU, and TU, metabolomics facilities at SRNF, and proteomics facilities at OUHSC. There is a great deal of interest among Oklahoma researchers in developing and enhancing informatics methods to gather, analyze and model data being generated state-wide.

Membership:
As of June 17, 2008 we have 72 members.

Membership dues: None yet.

Activities planned and/or past:
We have occasional seminars at OUHSC on bioinformatics-related topics including Systems Biology. Annually, we either have planned our own conferences (OKBIOS 2004, OKBIOS 2005, MCBIOS 2008), or sponsored travel to MCBIOS.

http://www.cudenver.edu/ccb
Contact: Harvey J. Greenberg Harvey.Greenberg@cudenver.edu
Mailing Address: Harvey J. Greenberg, Director, Center for Computational Biology; Mathematics Dept -- Campus Box 170; University of Colorado at Denver; PO Box 173364; Denver, CO 80217-3364
Structure: Academic and Industrial Associates; free for students
Geographical area included: Rocky Mountain States (NM, CO, WY, MT, and more)
Previous activities: Multiday workshops, Lecture series, Problem solving clinics. See web site for more details.

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http://www.vanbug.org/
Contact: Stefanie Butland / Francis Ouellette / Ryan Brinkman / Stephen Montgomery
Email: dev@vanbug.org
Mailing Address: VanBUG, c/o Francis Ouellette, 950 West 28th Ave, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V5Z 4H4

Geographical area included: British Columbia Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island (by video conference of monthly meetings)

Goal/Mission: VanBUG (Vancouver Bioinformatics Users Group) is an association of researchers, other professionals and students in the B.C. Lower Mainland who have an interest in the field of bioinformatics.Through monthly presentations we present our work, ask questions,
share ideas, tips and tricks.

Leadership: Stefanie Butland / Francis Ouellette / Ryan Brinkman / Stephen
Montgomery

Year founded and brief history: VanBUG is an original idea from Ryan Brinkman and Stefanie Butland in 2001. This site is designed and maintained by Scott McMillan (webmaster@vanbug.org) based on original ideas from Ryan, Stefanie and Francis Ouellette, and the added support of Stephen Montgomery.

Membership size and services : Monthly meetings are attended by >150 bioinformatics-inclined individuals who listen to invited speakers and discuss topics of interest at post-talk mixers.

Acitivites planned and/or past:Monthly meetings are scheduled and displayed at http://www.vanbug.org/meetings/ and have attracted such luminaries as Lincoln Stein, John Quackenbush, Sean Eddy and Nat Goodman.

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http://embnet.cifn.unam.mx/
Contact: collado@cifn.unam.mx

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