Leading Professional Society for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
Connecting, Training, Empowering, Worldwide

ISCB News and Announcements

ISMB/ECCB 2021
Welcome!

ISMB/ECCB 2021

 
ISCB Election - Polls are Open
 

Welcome to ISMB/ECCB 2021!

 

Let your curiosity take over, discover the latest research in the field and get ready to connect, collaborate, and engage! Registration is still open if you would like to join us for six science and networking filled days - https://www.iscb.org/ismbeccb2021-registration.

To access the virtual conference platform, you must log-in from the email sent to you with the subject line: Welcome to ISMB/ECCB 2021 – July 25-30. This email arrived directly from the conference platform provider Showcare (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) and will have instructions on how to log-in. Please ensure you check your Junk/Spam folder. If you cannot find this email, please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Navigating the Platform

The ISMB/ECCB 2021 virtual platform is divided up into several areas:

  • Sessions
  • Full Schedule
  • Research Exchange Forum which includes Exhibitors, Posters and Birds of a Feather sessions.
  • Café Connect
  • Your Personal Profile

You can always return to the main page by using Home Lobby button in the upper left or at the top of your screen. The left menu can be collapsed or expanded simply by clicking on the 3 bars on the top left corner. We recommend you take advantage of the in-platform tutorial at the bottom left called ‘Get Started’. This will walk you through not only your profile updates but other aspects of the platform as well.

Sunday, July 25: Highlights & Reminders

11:00 UTC: COSI Tracks: HitSeq3DsigTransMedBio-Ont
11:00 UTC: Special Session: Computational Biology going Green
11:00 UTC: Special Session: Representation learning in biology
11:00 UTC: WEB2021: Making training materials FAIR - experiences, challenges, solutions
15:20 UTC: 
Research Exchange Forum includes Posters and Exhibitors / BoFs
16:20 UTC ISMB/ECCB Distinguished Keynote: Rodrigo A. Gutierrez
17:20 UTC:
Daily Closing Comments
 

Thank you to our generous sponsors!



Harvard Medical School Department of Biomedical Informatics

 
 

 International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB)
 

ISCB Leadership Election: Polls are Open!

 

ISCB members have the privilege to nominate and elect members of the ISCB community to hold leadership positions. The 2021 open officer positions are Vice President and Treasurer. The 2021 ballot also contains the leadership election of the ISCB Student Council. The polls are now open for you to cast your vote for members who have accepted nominations for these leadership positions. It is your voice as a member of this prestigious organization to elect these leadership positions. You are encouraged to take a moment to cast your vote.

Cast your ballot for these important leadership positions
 

*ISCB members in good standing receive one vote for each open position. To access the ballot, log into My ISCB and click on the link provided in this email or the ISCB Election link in the left-hand menu.

 

 

ISMB/ECCB 2021
Register to Attend

ISMB/ECCB 2021

 
 
Register to Attend ISMB/ECCB 2021!
Registration deadline: July 30, 2021
 

Explore the Scientific Program - Don't miss this chance to join your colleagues for this premier virtual event - the scientific content is poised to enlighten all!

Click on the track areas to learn more about the science coming to a virtual platform near you!

3D-SIG COSI BIOINFO-CORE COSI Bio-Ontologies COSI
BioVis COSI Birds of a Feather BOSC COSI
CAMDA COSI CompMS COSI COVID-19 Special Track
Education COSI EvolCompGen COSI Function COSI
General Computational Biology HiTSeq COSI iRNA COSI
MLCSB COSI Keynotes Microbiome COSI
RegSys COSI NetBio COSI NIH/ODSS
Technology Track Special Sessions SysMod COSI
Tutorials Text Mining COSI TransMed COSI
  VarI COSI WEB 2021
 
 
REGISTER TO ATTEND
Register for a Tutorial!
 

Tutorials are held as separate virtual events - details on the tutorial program are available at: www.iscb.org/ismbeccb2021-program/tutorials

Note: You must be registered for the ISMB/ECCB 2021 conference to attend a Tutorial.

 
 

Full Day Tutorials (presented over two half-days):

 
 
 
 

 ISCBacademy Webinar Series
 
Register today for the next ISCBacademy Webinar!
 
Please use the link below to find more information or to register for:
 

June 28 at 11:00AM EDT -  Early Publication Access and EMBL-EBI Bio-molecular Data Tackle COVID-19 by Matt Pearce, EBI, and Michael Parkin, EBI.  Hosted by ISCB

The COVID-19 Data Portal (CDP) and Europe PMC’s full-text collection of COVID-19 preprints represent two efforts by EMBL-EBI to make data available to promote coronavirus research.

The COVID-19 Data Portal (CDP) was launched in April 2020 to provide access to SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 biomolecular data in an accessible manner. The data portal is part of the European COVID-19 Data Platform, which is provided by EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), ELIXIR, partners from the ReCoDID and VEO projects and the European Open Science Cloud. There are national portals that complement the covid19dataportal.org and represent a broad international collaboration.

In recognition of many researchers publishing their COVID-19 results rapidly via preprints during the pandemic, Europe PMC (https://europepmc.org/), an EMBL-EBI database for life science literature, launched a project in July 2020 to make the full text of COVID-19 preprints available for reading and reuse via a standard XML format. Preprints are linked to journal-published articles, open peer review materials, as well as underlying data in community databases, including PDBe, ENA, and many more. The full text corpus of COVID-19 preprints with an open access license or similar is made available for download via a public API and FTP site, enabling deeper analysis.

Hosted by:

The International Society for Computational Biology

 
 
Register for an upcoming ISCB Webinar
 

 

 

ISMB/ECCB 2021
Final Days to Submit Research

ISMB/ECCB 2021

 
 
Submit your Late-Breaking Poster!
Submission deadline: June 3, 2021
 

Don't miss this chance to present your research LIVE during dedicated poster session hours.

Submit your research for poster presentation and expect a live presentation room, poster, abstract video presentation and a fully interactive Q&A function throughout the duration of the conference. The closest set up to in-person that virtual can get you.

Tracks: Communities of Special Interest (COSIs):

3DSIGBio-Ontologies BIOINFO-COREBioVisBOSC: Bioinformatics Open Source ConferenceCAMDACompMSEducationEvolution and Comparative GenomicsFunctionHitSeqiRNAMLCSBMICROBIOMENetBioRegSys SysModText MiningTransMedVarIGeneral Computational Biology

ISMB/ECCB 2021 - Submit your abstract to a Communities of Special Interest Track

LATE BREAKING RESEARCH SUBMISSION
 
 
Register to Attend ISMB/ECCB 2021!
Registration deadline: July 21, 2021
 
 
ISMB/ECCB 2021 - Submit Your Reasearch and Register to Attend
 
 
REGISTER TO ATTEND
 
 
 

 ISCBacademy Webinar Series
 
Register today for the next ISCBacademy Webinar!
 
Please use the link below to find more information or to register for:
 

May 25, 2021 -  The Evolution of the Data Sharing Culture in Structural Biology by Helen Berman, Rutgers University. Hosted by ISCB

The Protein Data Bank was established 50 years ago in 1971. In this Webinar I will describe its evolution from a small repository to a large international data resource. The roles that the many stakeholders played in creating a data sharing culture and how science has benefited from that culture will be discussed.

Hosted by:

The International Society for Computational Biology

 
 
Register for an ISCB Webinar
 

 

ISMB/ECCB 2021
More Submission Opportunities

ISMB/ECCB 2021

 
 
Submit your Late-Breaking Poster!
Submission deadline: June 3, 2021
 

Tracks: Communities of Special Interest (COSIs):

3DSIGBio-Ontologies BIOINFO-COREBioVisBOSC: Bioinformatics Open Source ConferenceCAMDACompMSEducationEvolution and Comparative GenomicsFunctionHitSeqiRNAMLCSBMICROBIOMENetBioRegSys SysModText MiningTransMedVarIGeneral Computational Biology

Don't miss this chance to present your research and virtual poster board LIVE during dedicated poster session hours (scheduled to NOT conflict with scientific sessions).

Your virtual poster board is not your average board! Submit your research for poster presentation and expect a live presentation room, poster, abstract video presentation and a fully interactive Q&A function throughout the duration of the conference. The closest set up to in-person and virtual can get you.

ISMB/ECCB 2021 - Submit your abstract to a Communities of Special Interest Track

LATE BREAKING RESEARCH SUBMISSION
Submit to these Special Sessions!
Submission deadline: May 31, 2021
 
SST01: Representation learning in biology

Sunday, July 25 (11:00 – 12:20; 12:40 – 14:00; 14:20 – 15:20 UTC)

Organizers:
Christian Dallago, Technical University of Munich, Germany
Ananthan Nambiar, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States
Ali Madani, Salesforce Research, United States
Peter Koo, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, United States

The Special Session for Representation Learning in Biology is accepting abstracts for short talks and poster presentations. Find up to date details at https://representation.learning.bio.

SST01 SUBMISSIONS
 
SST04: Emerging gain-of-function mutations and their characterization by multi-omics network biology

Wednesday, July 28 (11:00 – 12:20; 12:40 – 14:00; 14:20 – 15:20 UTC)

Organizers:
Zeynep Coban-Akdemir, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, United States
Stephen Yi, The University of Texas at Austin, United States

The Special Session Emerging gain-of-function mutations and their characterization by multi-omics network biology is accepting abstracts for short talks and posters.
 
SST04 SUBMISSIONS
SST05: Single Cell and Spatial Data Analysis

Friday, July 30 (11:00 – 12:20; 12:40 – 14:00; 14:20 – 15:20 UTC)

Organizers:
Malte Luecken, Helmholtz Center Munich, Germany
Shyam Prabhakar, Genome Institute of Singapore
Florian Schmidt, Genome Institute of Singapore
Fabian Theis, Helmholtz Center Munich, Germany
Barbara Treutlein, ETH Zürich, Switzerland

The Special Session Single Cell and Spatial Systems is accepting abstracts for short talks.
 
SST05 SUBMISSIONS
 
 
Register to Attend ISMB/ECCB 2021!
Registration deadline: July 21, 2021
 
 
ISMB/ECCB 2021 Registration Open - Register Today!
 
 
REGISTER TO ATTEND
 
 
 

ISCB, in Partnership with Oxford University Press (OUP) Launches Bioinformatics Advances, an Online Open Access Journal
 
ISCB, in Partnership with Oxford University Press (OUP) Launches Bioinformatics Advances, an Online Open Access Journal
 

It is with great enthusiasm and much anticipation that the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) announces the launch of a new online only open access journal, Bioinformatics Advances. ISCB believes that Bioinformatics Advances will rapidly become another leading journal in the area of bioinformatics and computational biology, and as an official journal of ISCB, will be an important venue in which ISCB members will publish (at a discount) their findings and learn of the work of others, both ISCB members and non-members. ISCB is committed to providing high-quality publications and disseminating scientific content globally by supporting open access to scientific research as a means of more rapidly disseminating scientific advances, and of communicating the findings to scientists around the world. Open access also provides distinct advantages to scientific authors, including greater freedom to reuse and republish text, and greater availability of text for electronic data mining. In combination with rapid publication, high editorial standards, the need to meet ISCB members needs were the compelling reasons for ISCB to launch Bioinformatics Advances in partnership with Oxford University Press (OUP).

Bioinformatics Advances will be an online only interdisciplinary journal on bioinformatics and computational biology, addressing the continuing topical growth and evolution within the field of bioinformatics and computational biology. Due to the vast interdisciplinary nature of the field, many of its contributions are spread over a wide variety of topical journals. ISCB has aimed to develop a journal that would strengthen the awareness of the central role bioinformatics and computational biology play in the life sciences among the scientific community and creates a home for research to be published beyond the topical nature of other journals.

Bioinformatics Advances will illuminate the field of bioinformatics and computational biology in its entirety by providing a balance between methodical contributions and data analyses providing novel biological insights. The journal aims at providing a venue for high-quality contributions to our field that, so far, are at the risk of disappearing in the vast landscape of topical journals. Aside from original research contributions, the journal will offer formats that reflect the development of the field and its community, special collections and sections on important scientific meetings, reviews and opinion pieces, as well as personal profiles of and perspectives by special contributors to our field. Furthermore, ownership of the journal by ISCB enables a close-working and strategic relationship with the journal’s Editorial Board to ensure the journal is meeting the needs of the ISCB membership and supports the advancement of the ISCB mission.

ISCB is keen to be working with OUP as joint owners of Bioinformatics Advances. The current long-standing agreement to promote Bioinformatics as an official journal of the Society and the organization had already helped foster a very close relationship between ISCB and OUP. The partnership seemed like a natural one when ISCB was working on the proposal for the new journal. The partnership with OUP also allowed for a cascading submissions model between Bioinformatics and Bioinformatics Advances. This means that contributions that are not considered suitable for Bioinformatics may be eligible for direct transfer to Bioinformatics Advances. Both journals will have compatible submission guidelines to enable simple and speedy transfer without the need for reformatting. Transferring manuscripts with reviews from Bioinformaticswill reduce the burden on reviewers of papers. In a similar vein, Bioinformatics Advances will also consider papers that have been reviewed previously for other journals. If the other journal will confirm the veracity of the reviews, our editors will take them into account in their decision making.

Bioinformatics Advances will be led jointly by Alex Bateman, EMBL EBI, and Thomas Lengauer, Max-Planck Institute for Informatics, serving as Editors in Chief and they are joined by a stellar group of renown researchers serving as Associate Editors, representing scientific expertise from around the world.

Alex Bateman, former OUP Bioinformatics Chief Editor, brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise related to successful journal management. Dr. Bateman is an ISCB Fellows and has served for many years strategically leading ISCB. Dr. Bateman shared, “I am very excited about the opportunities that Bioinformatics Advances presents and look forward to working with ISCB, OUP and the Editorial Team."

Thomas Lengauer, ISCB Fellows, is the immediate past president of ISCB. A founder of ISCB, Dr. Lengauer has been instrumental over the years stewarding the Society in many different leadership roles, his most recent serving as ISCB president (2018-2021). Dr. Lengauer noted, "I am honored to continue to serve ISCB in the capacity of Co-Editor in Chief. This new journal targeted to strengthen the visibility of bioinformatics and computational biology and its role in bridging information sciences and life sciences is an important component of the mission of the Society and an exciting publishing opportunity for its members and the topical scientific community."

ISCB welcomes the inaugural Associate Editors:
 
  Bissan Al-Lazikani, Institute of Cancer Research, London 
Bissan Al-Lazikani's research focuses on developing and applying multidisciplinary computational techniques for drug discovery and clinical application. She is also Head of Data Science at the ICR, where she leads the Knowledge Hub Big Data Team for intelligent application of computers in adaptive, individualized therapy.
 
  Ivet Bahar, University Pittsburgh School of Medicine, USA
Ivet Bahar is Distinguished Professor and John K. Vries Chair, Department of Computational and Systems Biology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Her research focuses on understanding the mechanisms of Biomolecular system interactions and their binding, catalytic and allosteric signaling effects. A major research goal of her lab is to investigate the dynamics of molecular systems in the cellular environment cellular using fundamental principles of physical sciences and engineering.
 
  Sofia Forslund, Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, Berlin, Germany
Sofia Kirke Forslund is a computational biologist and a junior group leader at the Experimental and Clinical Research Center (ECRC), a joint venture between the Berlin Max Delbrück Center (MDC) and the Charité University Hospital. Her research group focuses on host-microbiome factors in cardiovascular diseases, working towards the goal of data-driven models for how human host and microbiome develop together under different conditions toward either health or disease.
 
  Marieke Kuijjer, Centre for Molecular Medicine Norway, University Oslo, Norway
Marieke Kuijjer is a Group Leader at the Centre for Molecular Medicine Norway (NCMM), University of Oslo, Norway; adjunct Assistant Professor at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), the Netherlands. Her research focuses on developing computational frameworks that place genomic data into the context of gene regulatory networks and on exploring how these networks influence cancer and complex disease.
 
  Nicola Mulder, University Cape Town
Nicola (Nicky) Mulder is a Professor and the Head of Division, Computational Biology, Department of Integrative Biomedical Sciences; Member of the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine (IDM), Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town.  She also serves as the Principal investigator of H3ABioNet, a Pan African bioinformatics network for H3Africa. Her main research interests lie in the areas of genomics and its application to human diseases of relevance to Africa.
 
  Aïda Ouangraoua, Université de Sherbrooke, Canada
Aïda Ouangraoua is an associate professor at the Department of Computer Science of Université de Sherbrooke where she holds the Canada Research Chair in Computational and Biological Complexity. She leads the Computational Biology (CoBIUS) Team at the Computer Science Department of Université de Sherbrooke. Her research focuses on developing algorithms and comparative genomics methods to study the evolution of genome structures, gene splicing structures, and RNA structures.
 
  Alexandros Stamatakis, Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany 
Alexandros Stamatakis is the head of the Computational Molecular Evolution (CME) research group at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS) and is the Chair in High Performance Computing in the Life Sciences (Department of Informatics) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).  His research interests are in algorithms, parallel computing, parallel architectures, computational phylogenetics, and evolutionary bioinformatics. 
 
  Zhang Zhang, National Genomics Data Center, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences & China National Center for Bioinformation, Beijing, China 
Zhang Zhang is a Distinguished Professor and Associate Director of National Genomics Data Center (NGDC), Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences & China National Center for Bioinformation (CNCB).  His research focuses on big data integration and curation, computational health genomics, and computational molecular evolution. 
 
Christine Orengo, ISCB President, remarked, “It is an exciting time for ISCB.  The ISCB leadership has been discussing for years the development of a journal that would truly support its members and the evolution of the field.  Here we are! I am so thankful to the ISCB Board of Directors, Publications Committee, and Task Forces that worked hard to develop this plan and put the dreams of many into action. I am also especially thankful to the inaugural editorial team who are working to launch this journal.”
 
Rhodri Jackson, Publishing Director for Open Access at OUP, said, “OUP is committed to providing high quality open access publishing options. We’re really pleased to launch Bioinformatics Advances with the International Society for Computational Biology, and are confident that the new journal will quickly become an important venue for research that will advance science in the field of bioinformatics and computational biology.”

Bioinformatics Advances is now accepting submissions for publishing consideration.  ISCB members will enjoy a 20% discount off publishing fees.  If you are not an ISCB member, you can learn more about membership and its benefits at https://www.iscb.org/become-a-member.
 
To learn more about Bioinformatics Advances visit: 
 
General Information: https://academic.oup.com/bioinformaticsadvances
Submission Information: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/bioadv
Author Guidelines: 
https://academic.oup.com/bioinformaticsadvances/pages/instructions-to-authors
Editorial Board Information: 
https://academic.oup.com/bioinformaticsadvances/pages/editorial-board
 
ISCB, in Partnership with Oxford University Press (OUP) Launches Bioinformatics Advances, an Online Open Access Journal

 

 

YBS 2021, May 23, 2021, Virtual Event
 
Youth Bioinformatics Symposium 2021!

Register Today!

 
Know a Middle or High School student interested in Computational Biology?

Register students today to hear from keynote Ruth Nussinov, and get ready to join workshops and even participate in the student challenge!
 
YBS 2021, May 23, 2021, Virtual Event - Showcase Your School
 
 
REGISTER TODAY
 
 
YOUTH BIOINFORMATICS SYMPOSIUM 2021
 
 

ISMB/ECCB 2021
TODAY IS THE DAY - FINAL HOURS TO SUBMIT YOUR ABSTRACT!

ISMB/ECCB 2021

 
Don't miss out - Submit your research!
Abstracts deadline: May 6, 2021
 

Submit your abstract to a Communities of Special Interest Track:

3DSIGBio-Ontologies BIOINFO-COREBioVisBOSC: Bioinformatics Open Source ConferenceCAMDACompMSEducationEvolution and Comparative GenomicsFunctionHitSeqiRNAMLCSBMICROBIOMENetBioRegSys SysModText MiningTransMedVarIGeneral Computational Biology

Can't find your home COSI? ISCB welcomes submissions for all research in computational biology and bioinformatics. Simply submit to the general computational biology track above for oral and poster presentation consideration.

Become a part of this dynamic conference - Submit your abstract today!

ISMB/ECCB 2021 - Submit your abstract to a Communities of Special Interest Track

ABSTRACT SUBMISSIONS
 
Call for SARS-Cov-2 / COVID-19 Abstracts
Deadline: May 6, 2021

We invite abstracts for research that is topical to the current SARS-Cov-2 / COVID-19 pandemic for consideration for presentation during the ISMB/ECCB 2021 conference. The presenter should be identified during the submission process. Presenters of accepted abstracts are required to make the presentation themselves, and must register and pay to attend the conference.

Submit your SARS-Cov-2 / COVID-19 Abstract today!

SARS-Cov-2 / COVID-19 ABSTRACT SUBMISSIONS
 
Technology Track Submissions
Deadline: May 13, 2021

ISMB/ECCB 2021 invites submissions to the Technology Track which allows organizations to showcase their software and/or hardware relevant to the bioinformatics / molecular biology community.

Submit today!
 
TECHNOLOGY TRACK SUBMISSIONS
 
 
ISMB/ECCB 2021 Registration Open - Register Today!
 
ISMB/ECCB 2021 Registration Open - Register Today!
 
 
REGISTER TO ATTEND