CZECH FREE AND OPEN BIOINFORMATIC ASSOCIATION (FOBIA)

http://fobia.img.cas.cz/

Contact: Dr. Metej Lexa
E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

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)
• 4th annual meeting (2008) - held as a Bioinformatics session at the CSBMB annual congress in Ceske Budejovice
• 5th annual meeting planned to take place in Zlin (2009)

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ISRAELI SOCIETY FOR BIOINFORMATICS AND COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY



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

Reports:

• 11th Israeli Bioinformatics Symposium

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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BIOINFORMATICS ITALIAN SOCIETY (BITS)

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: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view 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:
BITS Annual Conferences were held in Padua (2004), Milan (2005), Bologna
(2006) and Napoli (2007). In 2008 the Annual BITS Meeting was held in conjunction with ECCB08, organized in Cagliari by Anna Tramontano. BITS2009 will be in Genova (18-20 March 2009).

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GERMAN INFORMATICS SOCIETY - PROFESSIONAL GROUP: INFORMATICS FOR LIFE SCIENCES

German Informatics Society (GI): www.gi-ev.de/

Professional Group - Informatics for Biological Sciences (PG):
www.cebitec.uni-bielefeld.de/groups/fg402/


Contacts: Chair of PG Prof. Dr. Antje Krause, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Vice chair of PG Prof. Dr. Jens Stoye, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
GI office: Dr. Peter Federer, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it '; document.write( '' ); document.write( addy_text93771 ); document.write( '<\/a>' ); //--> This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Mailing addresses:

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 Biological Sciences, seeks to stimulate collaboration between scientists of different backgrounds in order to promote theoretical and practical support for the biological sciences. The group is interested in close collaborations with similar societies in other countries. Since April 2008 the group is part of the department Informatics for Life Sciences which promotes the cooperation with other professional groups in this area and with the GMDS (German Society for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology).

Structure:
Elected Board Members of the Professional Group - Informatics for Biological Sciences (PG)
Chair: Prof. Dr. Antje Krause, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Vice-chair: Prof. Dr. Jens Stoye, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it '; document.write( '' ); document.write( addy_text81802 ); document.write( '<\/a>' ); //--> This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Members of the board:
Prof. Dr. Sebastian Böcker, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Dr. Uta Bohnebeck, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it '; document.write( '' ); document.write( addy_text97660 ); document.write( '<\/a>' ); //--> This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Prof. Dr. Sven Rahmann, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it '; document.write( '' ); document.write( addy_text83578 ); document.write( '<\/a>' ); //--> This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Prof. Dr. Joachim Selbig, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Brief history of when and how group formed: 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: 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). The next GCB will take place end of September 2009 in Halle/Saale (www.gcb2009.de).

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SOCIETY FOR BIOINFORMATICS IN THE NORDIC COUNTRIES (SocBiN)

www.socbin.org/

Contact:
Arne Elofsson, President This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Inge Jonassen, Vice President This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

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 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , www.sbc.su.se/~arne

• Inge Jonassen, vice president, 2002--2005, University of Bergen, Norway This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ,www.ii.uib.no/~inge

• Christian Ahrens, 2004--2007, MDS Proteomics, Odense, Denmark This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

• Nikolaj Blom, 2004--2007, Danish Technical University, Lyngby, Denmark This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it '; document.write( '' ); document.write( addy_text32635 ); document.write( '<\/a>' ); //--> This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

• Jens Lagergren, 2003--2006, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , http://www.nada.kth.se/~jensl/

• David Liberles, 2003---2006, University of Bergen, Norway This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , www.cbu.uib.no/liberles

• Maido Remm, 2003--2006, Tartu University, Estonia This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

• Tapio Salakoski , 2004--2007, University of Turku, Finland tapio. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , www.it.utu.fi/henkilosto/info/?id=7

• Gudmundur Thorissen, 2004--2007, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, USA/Iceland
  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

• Mauno Vihinen 2003--2006, University of Tampere, Finland This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ,
  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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NETHERLANDS BIOINFORMATICS CENTER (NBIC)



www.nbic.nl

Primary Contacts::
Professor Antoine van Kampen scientific director NBIC, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Ruben Kok, managing director NBIC: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
General contact information: NBIC office: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Geographical area included: Europe, Netherlands

Goal/Mission:
It is our ambition at NBIC to build and maintain a strong bioinformatics and e-bioscience community that meets the (growing) demand for bioinformatics expertise, infrastructure and personnel in the Dutch life sciences field and provides a stimulating force for advanced research in biology.
See also: www.nbic.nl/about-nbic/organisation/ambition-and-approach/

Leadership:
NBIC management consists of directors, management team and steering committee.
See: www.nbic.nl/about-nbic/organisation/people/nbic-management/

Every two years the NBIC programmes are reviewed by the International Advisory Committee (IAC):
www.nbic.nl/about-nbic/organisation/people/advisory-committees/

Year founded and brief history of how formed:
Founded in 2003 as an collaborative effort between universities, industry, research and medical centres

Activities planned and/or past:
The NBIC programme consists of three elements: Research (BioRange), Support (BioAssist) and Education (BioWise). In addition NBICommons is the outlet of NBIC products to (inter)national community.

BioRange (Research)
BioRange: Cutting edge bioinformatics research for progress in life sciences
The NBIC BioRange programme is where biology, mathematics and computer science come together in a collection of research projects that address biological questions through the development of new methods, software and databases.

BioAssist (Support)
BioAssist: Community-based bioinformatics support in an e-bioscience environment.
Biologist and (bio)informaticians work together in the NBIC BioAssist programme on the development and maintenance of various support platforms. The focus is on sharing and re-using databases, tools and facilities. BioAssist has access to the advanced Dutch e-science research infrastructure that has been built by organisations such as BiGGrid, SURF, NCF, SARA and VL-e.

BioWise (Education)
BioWise: Educating current and next generations of bioinformaticians
NBIC's Education programme, BioWise, offers bioinformatics courses for all levels. From introductory practicals for high school pupils to advanced courses for PhD students through the NBIC PhD School.

NBICommons (Dissemination & Exploitation)
NBICommons: NBIC's dissemination and exploitation programme - is the outlet of NBIC products to (inter)national community.

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European Molecular Biology Network (EMBnet)



www.embnet.org/

Geographic area: Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, Australia.

Leadership structure:
EMBnet is organized as 'The EMBnet Stichting' foundation registered in The Netherlands. EMBnet is managed by a four-member Executive Board (EB). The One voting representative from each national node sits on the Board of EMBnet.

Executive Board members:

The activities of EMBnet are run by four-member Project Committees (PCs):

• The Education and Training (E&T) PC
• The Technical Management (TM) PC
• The Publicity and Public Relations (P&PR) PC

Membership:
The EMBnet organization is composed of several types of nodes with different duties and rights (benefits).

• National node: single academic institution or consortium with commitment and support from its national government, representing its country within EMBnet
• Specialist node: institution with special activity
• Industrial node: industrial partner of EMBnet
• Associated node: may be both academic or industrial partners

Process for becoming a member
To become a member node of EMBnet the candidate node has to send to the Executive Board, at least 3 months before the EMBnet Annual General Meeting, the following documents:

• Letter of motivation
• Detailed presentation of the institution or industrial partner
• Letter of commitment from the government (for national nodes only)

The EB evaluates the request and decides to invite the candidate node for a presentation (Institute, resources and activities) at the next EMBnet AGM. The acceptance of the candidature is voted after the candidate node presentation by the EMBnet Board during the AGM.

EMBnet goals
The main goal of EMBnet is to support the Life Sciences community by increasing the availability and accessibility of data resources and computing tools and by enhancing knowledge and proficiency in bioinformatics through education and training. The EMBnet main mission is indeed to provide training and education, investigate and develop new computational and bioinformatics technologies, exploit network infrastructures and to promote collaborations amongst different and multidisciplinary research groups and industrial companies.

EMBnet brief history
EMBnet was founded in 1988 by representatives of EMBL, FR, NL, UK, and Hoffmann-La Roche to set up a network of European laboratories using Biocomputing and Bioinformatics in Molecular Biology research, to support the EMBL Data Library (European Molecular Biology Laboratory) activities in distributing database resources and computing tools to facilitate sequence data accessibility. The EMBL was accumulating an ever-growing quantity of sequence data and both the molecular biology and the biotechnology research communities needed to have an easy and fast access to those data. The solution could only be found in a distribution of data and computer resources across a number of European nodal centres each one serving its own local research community.

Attracted by the high level support of EMBnet, many countries from Asia, Africa and America have joined EMBnet within the last few years, such as Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Kenya and Costa Rica. This has allowed EMBnet to expand well beyond the European frontiers and to relay on the cooperation of 39 member nodes extending to over 31 countries all over the World and reaching thousands of users. National EMBnet nodes provide local training and support programmes in local languages and also provide their national scientific communities with access to high performance computing resources, specialized databanks and up-to-date software. Some nodes act as redistribution centres to national research institutes and collaborative technical expertise within EMBnet provides support for sustaining the bio-computing facilities of the member nodes. Specialist nodes made available their own expertise in highly specialised areas.

In addition, EMBnet also maintains a fruitful cooperation with the Iberoamerican (RIBio), the Asia Pacific bioinformatics networks (APBioNet) and the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB). Close contacts have been established some years ago with the African Society for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (ASBCB) and fruitful cooperation with other scientific groups in northern Africa are on their way to be realized.

Past and planned activities:
EMBnet organizes a yearly workshop in conjunction with the EMBnet “The Annual General Meeting (AGM)” of the network.

In addition, the network holds monthly Virtual General Meeting (VGM) using a Marratech server installed at the EMBnet Swedish node. Participants to the AGM and VGMs are at least one representative (in general the node manager) of each node and members of Project Committees. The participation to the yearly workshop as well as to the monthly VGM of the network is open to all the members of a node staff, so it can vary depending on their personal availability and activities of the node.

Montly VGM are held also by each Project Committee (TC, ET and P&PR), and the participation is allowed to only PC members.

In September 2008, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of its activity, EMBnet organized, in conjunction with the AGM of the network, an international conference on bioinformatics and computational biology (www.embnet.org/EMBnet20thAnniversary). This conference attracted participant from Africa, America, Asia, Australia and Europe with a total of 128 participants and 78 abstracts submitted. As an outcome of this conference EMBnet has published a BMC Bioinformatics Conference supplement which collects 24 selected articles reflecting the character of the conference and its focus on emerging research fields in bioinformatics and computational biology (www.biomedcentral.com/bmcbioinformatics/10?issue=S6).

In 2009 the EMBnet organized an “International Conference & Meetings EMBnet-RIBio 2009 on "Bioinformatics for High Throughput Technologies and the Interface of Bioinformatics and Systems Biology” which was held in conjunction with the EMBnet AGM and the RIBio AGM in Cancun, Mexico from October 26th to 29th. This was the first time the EMBnet's AGM took place outside of Europe, bringing together bioinformaticians from all over the world and representatives of other major Bioinformatics Societies in the World.

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