ISCB News and Announcements

Dear Colleagues/Members,

With focus on everyone’s safety, the ISCB and ECCB leaderships have decided to move the ISMB/ECCB 2021 conference to a 100% virtual event. Capitalizing on the successes from last year and improving our platform in response to your suggestions, ISMB/ECCB 2021 will bridge time zones, enabling our global community to gather, share, network, and learn all from the comfort of your choosing.

Since its inception in 2004, the ISMB/ECCB conference alliance has become synonymous with collaboration, fostering fresh dialogue, and providing innumerable learning opportunities. Moving the conference to a virtual interface will not change what attendees have come to expect from this conference. The virtual interface will only enhance the attendee experience and ensure that more of you can enjoy it.

We invite abstracts for research that is topical to bioinformatics and computational biology, which is in progress (unpublished, formally Late-Breaking Research) or has been published after January 1, 2020 (previously Highlights Track) for consideration for oral and/or poster presentation.

Here is what to expect in the virtual environment:

• Training workshops and tutorials
• Student Council Symposium
• Live and on-demand sessions to benefit attendees from all time zones
• 500+ expected scientific talks
• Live question and answer feature to engage with the speaker during sessions
• Live chat feature to engage with other participants within your session room
• Dedicated time for research presentation within the Research Exchange Forum (formally Poster Hall)
• Ability to serendipitously make new connections when utilizing the attendee profile and match maker features
• Schedule one-on-one time with speakers, poster presenters, exhibitors, and sponsors to learn more about their work, products, or services
• Exclusive access to the ISMB/ECCB 2021 on-demand repository of talks and poster presentations for viewing at your leisure after conference dates

As you can imagine these state-of-the-art platform services do not come for free. ISCB has, however, subsidized the registration fees and retained the tiered pricing structure that was introduced last year to ensure affordable access for everyone.

The fees include full access to the online virtual platform of the conference as well as exclusive access to all of the content until Oct 31, 2021. From November 2021, the talks, with the appropriate permissions, will be available for free at ISCBtv.

If you are unable to afford the participation fee for ISMB/ECCB 2021 and hold an active ISCB membership, you can apply for a registration fellowship award that will cover the cost of the registration fees. Due to these continued unprecedented times, we will be opening up these awards to anyone who is an active ISCB member with priority going to members in low-income countries and students and postdoctoral fellows.

Though we realize nothing replaces trying to run across a convention center between sessions, ISCB is making every effort to create a virtual experience that mirrors an in-person experience with less sore feet at the end of the day. We hope that the rates above are attractive to you and that you will decide to join us.   The ISMB/ECCB 2021 call for abstracts in the COSI tracks, COVID track, general research track, and technology track is now open.  Submit your research by May 6, 2021, to be considered for oral presentation. 

Thank you for your continued support of ISCB and we look forward to “seeing” you July 26-30 for ISMB/ECCB 2021, the premier virtual event of the year!

Sincerely,