ISCB Newsletter 8-2

A Note From ISCB President Michael Gribskov

Professional societies exist for the benefit of their members. Usually this means providing opportunities for professional development through training and skill enhancement, setting standards for training and professional certification, and providing tools and resources that enhance the membership's abilities to perform their jobs (such as course preparation resources). ISCB is still a very young society and has far to go to provide strong support in many of these areas. In particular, I feel that we continue to do a poor job at harnessing the volunteer energies of members in providing these resources, but am confident we can get on the right track in addressing that in the foreseeable future. The strongest performance of ISCB continues to be in hosting our annual ISMB conference, and in the negotiation of discounts on journal subscription and conference registration fees for our members. These are excellent reasons for joining the Society, but I believe that providing better resources for professional training, and tools that support the work of our members must be our primary focus for the coming years.

The single most important contribution of ISCB toward the community at large continues to be in the presentation our annual meeting - ISMB. The organizers of ISMB 2005 have assembled an excellent program for this year's meeting. I thank David States, Brian Athey, and their many coworkers for putting together a meeting with many innovations. Great attention has been paid to reducing the cost of the meeting while maintaining the highest standards - I look forward to seeing many of you in Detroit in the days ahead.

The ISMB meeting requires a great deal of advance planning. I will also take this opportunity to thank Goran Neshich for his steadfast efforts and abundant enthusiasm in planning for ISMB2006 to be held in Fortaleza, Brazil August 6-10, 2006.

Planning for both of these meetings has been complicated by difficulties in funding and by increased restrictions on travel which are resulting in reduced attendance at international meetings such as ISMB and RECOMB. To counteract that we need to step up efforts to secure private grant funding to help make the meetings more accessible for all. Ultimately, it is important that we continue to provide appropriate forums for disseminating our science to the broadest possible audience. Conferences and journals remain our best vehicles for achieving that, and your participation is essential to their success.

On that note, I am happy to report that in a major new effort ISCB has teamed with the Public Library of Science to create a new open-access journal, PLoS Computational Biology. As a new official journal of the Society, we believe that our members will find PLoS Computational Biology to be essential reading, as well as a new and high-impact venue for publishing their work. With its focus on computational studies with direct biological impact, we believe that PLoS Computational Biology fulfills a need heretofore unmet in computational biology journals, and I am sure that you join me in welcoming the premier issue available online June 24, 2005 at www.ploscompbiol.org.

See you in Detroit,
Michael Gribskov President, ISCB