VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES

The Great Lakes Bioinformatics Consortium is pleased to announce a call for Volunteer Student Support Staff for its 15th Great Lakes Bioinformatics Conference (an official conference of the International Society for Computational Biology) (GLBIO 2023), the conference will be held May 15-18, 2023 at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. 

The conference provides an interdisciplinary forum for the discussion of research findings and methods, and development of long-term relationships and networking opportunities, for researchers within the region, as well as from around the world.

As a member of the Volunteer Student Support Staff, you will receive valuable first-hand experience at an academic association conference, a certificate of appreciation as well as a full refund on your registration once your obligations are complete. Please review the below volunteer requirements:

• Attend a volunteer meeting before the conference to ensure you are prepared for all volunteer responsibilities - likely Sunday, May 14th in the evening
• Complete all assigned shifts
  • You will be notified of your shifts in advance of the conference and are required to sign and return in acknowledgement
  • Please review the list of possible assignments below:
    • Registration:
      • Handing out name badges, processing of invoices and assisting with on-site registration
    • Educational sessions:
      • Check in with the session leader at the beginning of the session and identify yourself as the volunteer to assist in that session
      • Checking badges for entrance to session rooms
      • Counting attendees in each educational session
      • Monitor session rooms, alerting conference manager of any AV or emergency needs during session
      • Moderate the online Q&A and chat room for our virtual audience and be the in-person voice for the virtual audience during any Q&A sessions
    • Other conference opportunities:
      • Numbering poster boards to include monitoring hanging up and taking down of poster boards by presenters
      • Assist attendees in locating various events throughout the conference
      • Answer questions about the scientific program and giving directions within the venue

Only a small number of students will be selected to participate on this team. Apply today by completing the application online at https://forms.gle/hLPmkjQU7s6mVkUz9 by March 27, 2023.

Thank you,

Bel Hanson

GLBIO Conference Manager
International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB)
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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GLBIO 2023 Health and Safety Protocols

We encourage you to monitor this page to stay abreast of the latest updates on health and safety protocols for GLBIO 2023. ISCB reserves the right to alter these protocols as appropriate at any time.

The safety of conference participants is ISCB’s top priority, participants should be aware that, while ISCB will make every effort to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission on-site, it is possible that attendees will come in contact with people in airports, hotels, and around the conference facility who could potentially carry the virus, which is why ISCB is requiring attendees to be fully vaccinated with the minimal protection against COVID-19 for their own safety, as well as the safety of others.

Entry into Canada may require measures beyond those that are stated by ISCB to gain access to the country.  As ISCB is required to abide by Canadian entry requirements, please be sure to consult the Government of Canada Website.

Participants of GLBIO 2023 understand that it is their responsibility to review and ensure compliance with any stated country guidelines both for coming into Canada and departing Canada to return to their country of origin.  Costs associated with travel are the responsibility of the participant.

For the purposes of right of entry to GLBIO 2023, a person must have the minimal protection against COVID-19.  This is defined as:

• Two weeks post a full course of immunization with any vaccine that has been authorized by the World Health Organization (WHO). The product may be either fully authorized or authorized under an emergency use authorization or equivalent at the time of travel (see list of eligible vaccines - {https://covid19.trackvaccines.org/agency/who/} ).
• Negative test to COVID-19 following recent (four - six month) diagnosis

Vaccination with a vaccine that is not included on the WHO website as authorized will not be accepted.

For those unable to travel or meet the vaccination requirement, ISCB offers several virtual meeting registration options. ISCB believes the most effective way to ensure the safety of oneself is for them to be vaccinated and boosted if eligible and able against COVID-19.

How will vaccinations be verified?

Participants electing to attend in-person will be asked to self-attest during the registration process confirming they meet the entry requirements.

Will ISCB require proof of a negative COVID test upon arrival?

While ISCB will not require proof of a negative COVID test prior to arrival onsite, ISCB, however, strongly encourages all in-person participants to test for infection prior to departing for the conference.  As testing times vary world-wide, our suggested test period is no more than 48 hours from the departure of your home. 

On-Site Safety Measures

Public health guidance on preventing the transmission of COVID-19 continues to evolve, and ISCB will base its on-site protocols on the latest guidance.

We would encourage attendees to bring their own test kits and test prior to attending the meeting and at regular frequency during the meeting to reduce the risk of transmitting COVID-19. We can assist attendees who have no access to tests.  ISCB will provide the locations of local retail stores where tests can be purchased and will have a limited number of tests at the convention center for purchase by the attendee.

Sanitization

Even though the science now shows that COVID-19 transmission is less likely to occur from touching surfaces touched by multiple persons (i.e., lecterns), staff will clean these regularly to promote healthy sanitation overall. The convention center will also have sanitization stations throughout the venue.

Protective Masks

The wearing of protective masks is not required, they are strongly encouraged.  ISCB reserves the right to alter this protocol as appropriate at any time.  Participants are welcome to bring their own mask of choice and wear it if they wish. ISCB will have a limited supply of masks available onsite for those who wish to wear a mask.

Symptom Development While Onsite

On-site participants must agree that if they become symptomatic, they will immediately get tested for COVID-19 and cease in-person participation in the meeting and all related events. Individuals who test positive will not be permitted to continue attending the meeting in-person until a negative test is produced.

COVID-19 Testing

ISCB will not have  a testing facility onsite at the conference location.  ISCB will have self-administered rapid antigen tests (supply limited) available at the registration desk for those who may wish to test during the conference.  If you are onsite and experiencing symptoms, please contact ISCB (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.); we will bring a test to your hotel.

ISCB strongly encourages participants to bring their own testing kits if they wish to test throughout the conference.

What happens if I test positive onsite?

Participants who test positive for COVID-19 onsite, must follow the Government of Canada's COVID-19 rules.  They will not be allowed to attend sessions in-person until a negative test can be produced, although they will still have access to the virtual platform.

Information on individuals who test positive, including the name of the individual testing positive and the session in which the individual participated, will be provided to staff overseeing the COVID-19 testing and response efforts. This will enable staff to follow up with these individuals to provide information on policies for isolating while on site, facilitate safe and comfortable quarantine arrangements, and provide information on local health care options as needed. While aggregate information about the number of positive cases will be made available to other attendees, the identity of individuals who test positive will be kept confidential.

Unfortunately, a formal contact tracing system is not available. ISCB will, however, make aggregate data available to attendees via the conference app about the number of positive cases reported at the meeting so they can make informed decisions about their participation. The identity of individuals who test positive will be kept strictly confidential.

COVAC GLOBAL

While ISCB is taking numerous precautions to alleviate the risk to meeting attendees, the possibility of testing positive during the meeting, and therefore may need to quarantine in place per the Government of Canada guidelines may factor into the decision to attend the conference. To help address these concerns, ISCB recommends COVAC GLOBAL, a leading provider of medical evacuation services, to offer in-person attendees the option to purchase its COVID-19 Evacuation and Repatriation service. For those who purchase this service in advance, COVAC GLOBAL will arrange for medical transport – via private jet – back to your home to complete your quarantine at no additional expense, should you be diagnosed with COVID-19 while at the conference.

Conference Refund Policy

ISCB understands the continued volatility of the ongoing COVID-19 health crisis. In the event a registered participant cannot travel due to a positive test result prior to departing for the conference, ISCB will partially refund the participants registration fee to still allow the participant access to the virtual platform.  Participants who are still unable to participate in the conference virtually, may request a full refund. Full refund requests must be made prior to the start of the conference (May 15) and be accompanied by positive COVID-19 testing documentation. ISCB will not accept refund requests after 12:00 PM EDT, May 15, 2023.

ISCB COVID-19 Waiver

Upon registration to the conference, ISCB will require all in-person participants to sign the following waiver:

I understand that travel and gathering involves risk of sickness, including sickness from COVID-19. I (and on behalf of my guest(s)) waive and release ISCB and its sponsors and exhibitors, and their employees and agents, from and against claims, liabilities and expenses arising from injury, sickness or death from contraction or spread of COVID-19 or other communicable disease due to travel to or attendance at an event sponsored by ISCB.

I will take necessary precautions while at the event including, but not limited to, engaging in appropriate social distancing, wearing a mask when requested and/or required, minimize face touching, frequently washing hands and avoiding risky environments such as overcrowded bars or restaurants. I agree to not attend any GLBIO event if I feel ill or had recent exposure to a COVID-19 case. This waiver and release is binding on me.

Links in this page: Session Proposals | Responsibilities of a Session Organizer | Financial Support | Review Process | Important Dates

GLBIO 2023 will have special sessions and Workshops. The topic and structure of the sessions can vary but should be of interest to a substantial component of the bioinformatics research community. Sessions can be of three main types:

• Focused sessions or workshops on specific research problems in computational biology and bioinformatics (e.g., cancer genomics, genome visualization tools, precision medicine, single cell omics, population genetics, regulatory genomics.)
• Software schools, aimed at providing training in new methods
• Activities focused on students and postdocs, or on non-academic career opportunities

Sessions can be considered as mini-symposia on timely topics, or a new emerging area presented by topic experts. Sessions should be organized around contributed talks, invited talks, or a combination of both types, or may not have any talks (e.g., software schools and activities involving students and postdocs in training activities).

Click Here to complete the form and upload your proposal in PDF format for a Special Session or Workshop

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Session Proposals

For sessions focusing on special research topics, the structure detailed below is required. Proposals for other types of sessions (e.g., software schools, or activities aimed at students) may have somewhat different formats, but should follow roughly the same guidelines. All proposals should be a minimum of 2 pages and no more than 6 pages in length.  Research topic proposals should have the following structure:

• Title: Up to 20 words, preferably worded to pique delegates' interest.
• Topic: No more than one page describing the session, its research theme, and expected type of participants (undergraduates, graduate students, non-academic professionals, etc.). This section should also present a compelling argument for the importance and timeliness of the proposed session in the context of the bioinformatics community.
• Organizer(s): Provide a list of the organizers. This should include full name, title, affiliation, email address, and webpage, and qualifications to organize this session/workshop for each.
• Session/Workshop Details:  
  • Length/Duration of the session/workshop - will it be a half-day or full-day
  • Describe the structure of the session (e.g., number of contributed talks, invited talks, or other activities). 
  • Include a draft schedule showing how the session/topic will be organized including placement of invited talks, accepted talks, panel discussions, etc.
  • How presentations will be selected (invitation, call for submissions, etc.)
  • Include confirmed or possible speakers. This is not required, but may add weight to the proposal—indicate speakers who have already agreed to participate. NOTE: See Special Session Registration information for more details about compensation.
  • Previous meetings of this with attendance statistics if applicable.
  • Potential sources of sponsorship for the session(s) to offset the cost of the venue space, AV requirements and coffee breaks.

Submission instructions:
Click Here to complete the form and upload your proposal in PDF format for a Special Session or Workshop

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Responsibilities of a Session Organizer

If your proposal is accepted, you will be responsible for most of the organization of your session, including: (1) creating and maintaining a webpage for your session, (2), deciding the session structure including length of time talks and chairing the session, (3) attending GLBIO 2023 and running the session, (4) if your session has invited talks or tutorials, communicating and coordinating with the speakers, (5) if your session has contributing talks, this will be collected by you, and will be independent of the main conference submission system.  

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Financial Support

Accepted sessions will receive two (2) complimentary GLBIO registration for a half-day session/workshop and four (4) complimentary GLBIO registrations for a full-day session. Note that any additional expenses will need to be covered by the session organizers.

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Review Process

Session and workshop proposals are due by January 12, 2023. These will be reviewed by the GLBIO steering committee and program co-chairs, and decisions will be announced by January 26, 2023.

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Important Dates

• JANUARY 12, 2023: Proposals due for Special Sessions and Workshops
• JANUARY 26, 2023: Notification regarding the Special Session Proposals
• FEBRUARY 23, 2023: Webpage for session created (with list of organizers and confirmed speakers, and description of the goals of the session). Registration opens February 1 so the earlier your information is available to potential attendees is appreciated.

Questions? Please send email to:

Aida Ouangraoua (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) or Jeff Xia (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

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Links in this page: General Submission Information | Poster Information | Questions

General Submission Information

All Submissions for GLBIO:  https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=glbio2021

Submissions are invited for full papers, oral presentation abstracts, and posters at the 14th Great Lakes Bioinformatics Conference, an official conference of the International Society for Computational Biology. This is an invitation to scientists and professionals working in the fields of bioinformatics and computational biology to submit high quality original research papers for presentation at GLBIO 2021. Authors of papers and oral abstracts that are accepted to the conference will present their work at the conference (longer talks for full papers, shorter talks for the abstracts). Accepted full papers will be considered for inclusion in a PLOS special collection devoted to GLBIO 2021. Individual papers in the PLOS collection will appear in PLOS Computational Biology or PLOS One, according to the authors’ preference.

A wide definition and inclusion of bioinformatics/computational biology will be considered, and topics of interest include the following:

• Algorithms & Machine Learning
• Bioinformatics Education
• Biostatistics
• Cheminformatics
• Clinical & Health Informatics
• Databases, Ontologies & Biocuration
• Disease Models & Molecular Medicine
• Epidemiology & Biodiversity
• Evolutionary, Comparative Genomics & Phylogenetics
• Gene Regulation & Transcriptomics
• Genome Informatics
• Image Analysis
• Macromolecular Structure & Function
• Metagenomics
• Microbiome Informatics
• Network Biology
• Proteomics & Metabolomics
• Sequence Analysis
• Synthetic Biology
• Systems Modeling
• Text Mining & Natural Language Processing
• Visualization

 
Key dates: Click here  Conference website: www.iscb.org/glbio2021 

Submission website: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=glbio2021

Special Sessions:  Authors can request consideration by special sessions in Easychair.  Please carefully review the information below before submitting in Easychair.

Sessions that will consider Full papers and Abstracts 

• Genotype to Phenotype in Model and Non-Model Organisms

 
Sessions that will consider Abstracts only

• Knowledge Guided Machine Learning in Biology
• Taxonomic Names and Metadata: A Framework for Big Data Interoperability

Full Papers for Oral Presentation submissions to GLBIO 2021 should be prepared using PLOS ONE or PLOS Computational Biology format (see below on how to choose the journal). Submissions to GLBIO should be made via Easychair and the deadline is February 5th, 2021. Authors of all full papers that are accepted for oral talks at the conference will have the option of being considered for publication in a PLOS ONE/PLOS Computational Biology Collection devoted to the GLBIO 2021 conference (choice of journal for individual papers is the authors’ – see below). Prior to the submission to the PLOS manuscript submission system, authors who decide to proceed with this option will be expected to address the reviewers’ comments received during the GLBIO review process (and if the authors desire, potential feedback from the audience received during their GLBIO oral talk presentation). Please note that such revised papers will be subject to additional peer review by the chosen journal (see below), where members of the PLOS Editorial Board who will handle the papers will, whenever possible, invite the same reviewers that have participated in the GLBIO review process.

We will follow up after the conference with the authors of all full papers that are accepted for oral talks at GLBIO regarding instructions on how to submit to the GLBIO 2021-related PLOS ONE/PLOS Computational Biology Collection. Authors will be required to submit their revised manuscript to the relevant PLOS journal between May 14th, 2021 and July 31st, 2021 (note that the authors will hear back from GLBIO about their papers decision by March 12th, 2021). Note that in the past, the average time to publication for the GLBIO papers submitted to PLOS was about half the overall PLOS ONE average.

Authors are responsible for any fees or expenses with regards to the PLOS ONE/PLOS Computational Biology Collection publication of their paper. Currently, the PLOS ONE article processing charge is $1,695 and the PLOS Computational Biology article processing charge is $2,500. PLOS will also apply a Collection surcharge, the amount of which has yet to be confirmed. For the GLBIO 2019 PLOS Collection, the surcharge amounted to $500 for PLOS ONE and $750 for PLOS Computational Biology.

The choice of the journal (PLOS ONE versus PLOS Computational Biology) should be made by the authors based on how well the scope of their paper matches the scope of the given journal. PLOS ONE scope is described here. PLOS Computational Biology scope is described here. PLOS Computational Biology scope can be thought of as being more restrictive than that of PLOS ONE, e.g., PLOS Computational Biology papers & should provide profound new biological insights. All papers that are accepted for oral talks at the GLBIO conference should by default match with the scope of PLOS ONE, and a subset match with the scope of PLOS Computational Biology. If an accepted GLBIO paper is submitted to PLOS Computational Biology but it is judged that the paper's scope does not match the scope of the journal, the paper will be transferred to PLOS ONE instead. If both journals fit the scope of the given paper, a factor that the authors might wish to consider when choosing the journal could be the associated publication fees (see above).

For full paper submissions, GLBIO does not accept work previously published through a peer-review mechanism, or work that is/will be under review elsewhere. This is because full paper submissions to GLBIO are considered as submissions to both GLBIO and PLOS ONE/Computational Biology. If authors wish to submit to GLBIO work that was published or is/will be under review elsewhere, they should do so as a short abstract rather than a full paper. Please note that conference presentations, posting on recognized preprint servers (such as Arxiv, bioRxiv and PeerJ preprints), or posting on a personal or employer's website do not constitute prior publication.

CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT

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Poster Information

Abstracts for Poster submissions to GLBIO 2021 should be half a page in length (approximately 300 words) and have no figures.  Submission deadline in Easychair is March 1, 2021 for Posters and April 16, 2021* for Late Breaking Posters.

* If accepted, Poster Presenters will gain access to the conference platform on Tuesday May 4, 2021. The deadline to submit your PDFs and recording is Friday, May 7, 2021.

We also encourage all participants to submit their posters and slides (for free) to The Great Lakes Bioinformatics Conference (GLBIO) conference channel in the ISCB Community Journal.

Accepted posters will be viewable in a Virtual Poster Hall.  When preparing accepted posters please note that your poster will need to be sent to us in two formats - a PDF or PNG of the poster and a 3-5 minute flash talk video not to exceed 100MB.

CLICK HERE TO SUBMIT

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Questions

For any GLBIO questions, please contact: Bel Hanson, ISCB Operations and Programs Senior Manager, at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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