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

UPCOMING DEADLINES & NOTICES

  • Last day for presenting and poster authors to complete registration *no extensions*
    GLBIO 2024
    April 22, 2024
  • Late poster submissions open (posters only)
    ISMB 2024
    April 22, 2024
  • Talks and posters submissions deadline
    ECCB 2024
    April 23, 2024
  • Registration deadline for organisers and speakers
    ECCB 2024
    April 30, 2024
  • Last day to upload ANY/ALL files to the virtual Platform
    GLBIO 2024
    May 06, 2024
  • Acceptance notification for talks and posters
    ECCB 2024
    May 08, 2024
  • Tech track proposal deadline (closes earlier if capacity is reached)
    ISMB 2024
    May 10, 2024
  • Early bird registration opens
    APBJC 2024
    May 10, 2024
  • Talk and/or poster acceptance notifications
    ISMB 2024
    May 13, 2024
  • Conference fellowship invitations sent for early abstract accepted talks and posters
    ISMB 2024
    May 13, 2024
  • (Conditional) Acceptance notification for proceedings
    ECCB 2024
    May 15, 2024
  • Registration deadline for talk presenting authors
    ECCB 2024
    May 15, 2024
  • CAMDA extended abstracts deadline
    ISMB 2024
    May 20, 2024
  • Late poster submissions deadline
    ISMB 2024
    May 20, 2024
  • Conference fellowship application deadline
    ISMB 2024
    May 20, 2024
  • Revised paper deadline
    ECCB 2024
    May 25, 2024
  • Tech track acceptance notification
    ISMB 2024
    May 31, 2024
  • Last day for discounted student hotel booking
    ISMB 2024
    May 27, 2024
  • Late poster acceptance notifications
    ISMB 2024
    May 28, 2024
  • CAMDA acceptance notification
    ISMB 2024
    May 30, 2024
  • Complete workshop/tutorial programme with speakers and schedule online
    ECCB 2024
    May 30, 2024
  • Conference fellowship acceptance notification
    ISMB 2024
    May 31, 2024
  • Tech track presentation schedule posted
    ISMB 2024
    May 31, 2024
  • Final acceptance notification for proceedings
    ECCB 2024
    May 31, 2024

Upcoming Conferences

A Global Community

  • ISCB Student Council

    dedicated to facilitating development for students and young researchers

  • Affiliated Groups

    The ISCB Affiliates program is designed to forge links between ISCB and regional non-profit membership groups, centers, institutes and networks that involve researchers from various institutions and/or organizations within a defined geographic region involved in the advancement of bioinformatics. Such groups have regular meetings either in person or online, and an organizing body in the form of a board of directors or steering committee. If you are interested in affiliating your regional membership group, center, institute or network with ISCB, please review these guidelines (.pdf) and send your exploratory questions to Diane E. Kovats, ISCB Chief Executive Officer (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).  For information about the Affilliates Committee click here.

  • Communities of Special Interest

    Topically-focused collaborative communities

  • ISCB Member Directory

    Connect with ISCB worldwide

  • Green ISCB

    Environmental Sustainability Effort

  • Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

    ISCB is committed to creating a safe, inclusive, and equal environment for everyone

Professional Development, Training, and Education

ISCBintel and Achievements

Speaker Information

Presentation Overview
Speaker Ready Room
Presentation information for Students, Post Docs and Young Investigators!

Presentation Overview

 

Speakers are requested to review the conference schedules available on the conference website. Please note that minor schedule changes may continue to be made. Schedules are available at: http://www.iscb.org/ismb2010-program

All parallel sessions are 25 minutes in length and there are four (4), 25 minutes sessions scheduled in the morning and afternoon. Speakers are asked to be available at the presentation room 10-15 minutes before the start of the first presentation.

Speakers should prepare a 20-minute presentation. The additional time will allow for movement to the podium and the opportunity to respond to one or two questions. Each room will have a presentation timer and sessions are chaired to ensure the program schedule is adhered to.

Speaker Ready Room:

Please visit the Speaker Room at least one (1) day before your presentation. A technician will be there and available to assist you to place your presentation on the main presentation computer for transfer to the computer in your presentation room.

Delegates with presentations developed on Apple computers may use their own Apple computer but are requested to meet with the technician in advance so that details can be coordinated regarding the procedure for using the Apple computer for presentations. It is recommended that Apple computer users bring their own cable adapters to connect to the presentation projectors.

The speaker room is located in Room 313, Hynes Convention Center, Level 300 – you can ask the volunteer staff at the Information desk for directions. It is available to conference speakers to review their conference presentations and to transfer their presentations to the meeting room they will present in.

Speakers Room Hours
Saturday July 10, 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Sunday, July 11, 8:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Monday, July 12,  8:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Tuesday, July 13 8:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
 

Information about the presentation computers The PC's are configured as follow:

Windows XP SP3
Office 2007
Media Play 11
QuickTime
Adobe Reader 9.x
IE 8
Fire Fox 3.6
Window XP

Don't use "embedded fonts" in PowerPoint especially if there's video/audio or any other linked information in the presentation. Make sure that the Powerpoint file and video / audio-clips are put into the same folder.

Speaker Tips


Click here to download speaker tips

Attention Students, Post Docs and Young Investigators!

Please read these helpful tips on giving a quality talk at ISMB 2010.

As you prepare to give an oral presentation at ISMB 2010, the following are some helpful tips for ensuring that both you and the international and interdisciplinary conference audience get the most out of your talk. As some talks will be recorded for viewing by our community for years to come, following these tips can also serve to make certain your best possible presentation serves you well in your future career.

Limit the number of slides to be presented.
A common mistake among presenters at all levels of experience is including too many slides for the allotted presentation time. We have all attended talks where the presenter either had to rush through or skip entire sections of slides due to having too many slides for the amount of time allotted to the talk. Worse is the presenter whose talk goes beyond the allotted time, and he or she ignores the session chair and/or session timer in order to give the full presentation detailed in the slides.

A rule of thumb is to have just one robust and informative slide for each minute of the presentation. Two or more slides per minute is sometimes possible, but this typically only works if half of the slides are updates to the slides shown before them, rather than completely new slides of different information. Keep in mind that an oral presentation slot has a time limit, and it will never be enough to fully explain all of your research efforts and results. The goal should be to give enough of an overview, with just enough depth, to make the audience understand your project, believe in your results, and pique their interest to follow up for further information available in your paper, on the web or in a follow up conversation with you after the talk.

ISMB is a conference of several parallel sessions that must all start and stop at the precisely scheduled time, so if some talks go beyond the allotted time limit the entire schedule could be thrown off. With over 150 scheduled talks, one can imagine the havoc that this could create. Therefore, the ISMB schedule will be strictly adhered to by the session chairs, and presenters must be cut off if they are unable to finish their presentations on time. Please ensure you are not one of those presenters!

Prepare slides that show well from a distance.
There are two important aspects of slide preparation: Visibility and readability.

Regarding visibility, color backgrounds and text can look great on a computer screen but awful when projected, and some colors don't display well under any circumstances. Microsoft has some tips on this subject that, for the most part, apply to any presentation software (see http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint/HA010120721033.aspx). Important details can fail to be projected with the wrong use of colors, so keeping colors simple and compatible is a safe bet.

Regarding readability, the devil is always in the details, and the highly data-driven aspect of computational biology can make this tip hard to follow. But, if a slide has too much data squeezed into it most audience members will not be able to see or decipher the data. If the data is important for the audience to see or follow, such a slide will serve little or no purpose.

So, this tip is intended to encourage you to consider the data included in your slides. Is it essential for the audience to be able to see it to understand it? If yes, go with simple colors and find ways to highlight and feature the most relevant data through the bold and/or color graphics such as arrows, circles, or magnified zoom options available in your presentation software.

It is also to your benefit to give your slides to the technical staff as early as possible and ask to check out how each slide displays under the actual projection display environment. This will give you time to make changes if the layout shifts using the equipment of the venue, and/or if the color washes out and needs to be changed.

Practice, practice, practice.
You can never over-rehearse an oral scientific presentation. Although slides will prompt you through each topic, it is important to practice out-loud several times. This will help you develop a suitable pace, attain a natural rhythm, and try out several options of words and phrases to find the ones that best communicate your research. It will also ensure you are able to make it through all of your slides without running out of time. If after a few run-throughs you still cannot meet the time limit, you will need to make adjustments.

Practicing is important for everyone, but it can be even more important if English is not your native language. The conference is expected to have attendees from over 50 countries. Because you will be communicating to many other non-native English speakers your pronunciation should be well exercised. If at all possible, you should ask a family member, friend, colleague from your lab or your advisor to listen to at least one practice session so you can work out the nerves of speaking to a live audience and gain valuable feedback. If possible, self-recording your presentation is another valuable tool.

Practice sessions should start well before you travel to Stockholm. Please make time the night before your talk to practice again. If you are scheduled to give a 20-minute talk, you should schedule one full hour of practice time that final night to allow yourself at least two or three rehearsals.

Each time you practice you will say things slightly differently, which is fine. When you give the actual conference presentation from the podium, it should sound like you have given this talk before, but not sound like you are reading from a script.

Relax and learn from your presentation experience.
Each time you give a talk you will improve your presentation skills and gain confidence in your public speaking abilities. Pay attention to what you did well and where you might have room to improve, and make a note of it for your next talk.

Whether this is the first for fifty-first time you are speaking at a major international conference, you will likely become nervous as the time of your talk approaches (even if you have given this same talk before). These nerves will likely stay with you as you start to give your talk. But, please know that almost everyone experiences this. The audience is interested in your presentation and not nearly as aware of your nerves as you are. Take a deep breath and try to slow down if needed - many speakers talk too fast when they are nervous. If you have rehearsed in advance, the nerves will subside as you hit your stride and you will do very well.

Last but not least, thank you!
There are many conference options these days, but none that are as large and internationally diverse in the field of bioinformatics/computational biology as this one. Thank you for choosing to submit your research to ISMB 2010, and congratulations on having your work accepted for presentation. We hope this proves to be a positive experience, and that we will see you again at many more ISMB and ECCB conferences in the future.

Sincerely,
Your ISMB Conference Organizers

p.s. For additional oral presentation tips, please read "Ten Simple Rules for Making Good Oral Presentations" in ISCB's official open access journal, PLoS Computational Biology, at http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.0030077 .

Airport Shuttle

ISMB is pleased to announce that King's Shuttle & Limousine Service is offering ISMB delegates a discounted rate of $12.00 (USD) one-way between Logan International Airport and Boston hotels.

Please follow this link http://www.bostonkingsupershuttle.com/ to reserve your one-way or round-trip airport shuttle.

Please note the ISMB Conference special rate code to enter for online reservation is 4400.

For information contact: King Shuttle & Limousine Service by phone:+1.617.913.1912 or e-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Instructions on where to meet your shuttle when you arrive at the airport:

Pick Up Locations

Directions

http://www.bostonkingsupershuttle.com/images/termA.jpg

Go to ground floor (Baggage Claim), Go out door and cross street to second traffic island. Sign reads "Scheduled and Shared Vans."

B

Ground floor, outside baggage claim, wait at yellow Scheduled and Shared Vans sign.

terminal C

Ground floor, outside baggage claim, cross the street to the fourth traffic island, wait at Scheduled and Shared Vans sign.

Terminal D

Go To Terminal C Pick Up Location

terminal E

Ground floor, exit baggage claim, wait at Scheduled and Shared Vans sign

About Us

The annual international conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) is the major meeting of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB). Over the past eighteen years the ISMB conference has grown to become the world’s largest bioinformatics/computational biology conference, and ISMB 2010 will be the year’s most important computational biology event globally.

The ISMB conferences provide a multidisciplinary forum for disseminating the latest developments in bioinformatics/computational biology. ISMB brings together scientists from computer science, molecular biology, mathematics, statistics and related fields. Its principal focus is on the development and application of advanced computational methods for biological problems. ISMB 2010 will offer the strongest scientific program and the broadest scope of any international bioinformatics/computational biology conference in 2010. Building on past successes, the Boston conference is designed to cater to variety of disciplines within the bioinformatics/computational biology community.

ISMB 2010 takes place July 11-13, at the John B. Hynes Convention Center in Boston, MA, USA. For two days preceding the conference a Satellite Meeting, a Student Council Symposium, and a selection of Special Interest Group Meetings and Tutorials are all offered to enable conference participants to come up to speed on the latest methods and tools within specialty research areas. This year the annual MGED meeting (http://cccb.dfci.harvard.edu/mged13/ ) participants join in at the tail end of ISMB on the afternoon of July 13 and then continue their meeting for an additional two days at the same venue.

ISMB-2010 Awards

Ian Lawson Van Toch Memorial Award
RCSB RDB Poster Prize
ISMB Killer App Award
JBI Award
PhRMA Foundation Awards

Ian Lawson Van Toch Memorial Award for Outstanding Student Paper

 

Ian Lawson Van Toch was a 23 year old Medical Biophysics graduate student at the University of Toronto when he passed away very suddenly and unexpectedly in August 2007 due to a rare form of heart disease.

Ian was fortunate to have already discovered his passion for computational biology and how it can – and will – lead to quantum breakthroughs in cancer research. This passion was sparked when Dr Igor Jurisica hired Ian to work in his lab at the Ontario Cancer Institute as a researcher during the summer of 2006. That introduction blossomed into a mentoring relationship that is so vital to helping young students launch their careers.

As a result of this passion a special memorial fund was created. The Ian Lawson Van Toch Cancer Informatics Fund at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto. Ian’s Fund now proudly sponsors at least one student every summer to intern at the Ontario Cancer Institute. Since 2008 the prize, supported by IBM and PMHF, has been awarded at ISMB for an Outstanding Paper by a Student.


 

RCSB PDB Poster Prize

 

The RCSB PDB Poster Prize is awarded for the outstanding student poster presentation in the category of Structure and Function Prediction. The award will consist of a related educational book.

Additional details on this award are available at http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/static.do?p=general_information/about_pdb/poster_prize.html


 

ISMB Killer App Award

 

The ISMB Killer App Award will be awarded to the individual or team that presents a tool/system that is judged to be of the most practical benefit to biochemists and molecular biologists.

To be eligible, the tool/system must be presented at ISMB as a poster and must be a fully functional application. A panel of expert judges will select three finalists who will be invited to give a short talk as part of a Technology Track session at ISMB 2010. The winner will receive an Apple iPad and their work will possibly be integrated and featured on Elsevier’s platforms. The ISMB Killer App Award is generously sponsored by Elsevier’s Applications Initiative.
 


 
JBI Award for the Best Paper in Translational Bioinformatics

 

JBI (Journal of Biomedical Informatics) editorial board members in attendance at the ISMB meeting will serve as the selection committee for the JBI Award for Best Paper in Translational Bioinformatics. The finalists' papers will be identified by the selection committee in consultation with the Chair of the ISMB Scientific Program Committee, and will be announced at the end of the meeting.

The selection of the winning paper will be based on the written quality of the paper, the research described, and the oral presentation at the meeting. JBI is interested in encouraging, publishing, and rewarding papers in Translational Bioinformatics that correspond to the journal’s emphasis on innovative methodology and on the relevance of the work to human disease and its diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, or prevention. The editorial describes JBI's emphasis on this area of bioinformatics, which has been in effect since July 2009.

Journal of Biomedical Informatics
Volume 42, Issue 2, April 2009, Pages 199-200

Authors of the award winning paper will receive a certificate and a $250.00 cash award. Authors will also be invited to expand their paper for submission and possible publication in the Journal of Biomedical Informatics.

 

PhRMA Foundation Awards

 

altThe PhRMA Foundation provides fellowships and grants to young scientists pursuing research careers in the discipline of Informatics. The goal of the Informatics Program is to promote the use of informatics in an integrative approach to understanding biological and disease processes. Informatics awards support career development for scientists engaged in cutting-edge research in information technology and experimental validation, thus advancing the integration of molecular and clinical approaches into problems of pharmacological concern. Award winners are not necessarily ISMB presenters, and these awards are presented with no strings attached.
 
This program was created in 2002 to support the new discipline of Informatics, and in 2010 nearly $400,000 was awarded to eight scientists. For application details for the 2011 Informatics program, go to: http://www.phrmafoundation.org.

ISMB Student Volunteers

** Volunteer Application Form** - Form is now closed.
A printable Volunteer Flyer is available here

The organizers of ISMB 2010 are now accepting applications for University students to volunteer at the ISMB conference including on pre-conference SIG and Satellite days. Volunteers are required from July 8 - 13, 2010. Acceptance notifications will be sent within one week after application.

Volunteers are expected to assist for approximately 20 - 25 hours during the conference dates (generally for a shift of 4 - 5 hours). In return, volunteers are provided with a complimentary conference registration and a conference T-shirt (which must be worn when working as a volunteer during the conference). Please note that Travel (airfare) and accommodation to and from the conference for volunteers is not covered.

Travel to the United States

 
All international visitors regardless of country of origin must present a passport or secure document when entering the United States.
 
It is important that you ensure that you have a valid passport for entry and any other necessary documents that may be required including visa. Please ensure that you allow enough time for applying for a visa for entry should one be required for your travel and participation at ISMB 2010 in Boston.
 
Details are available on a number of websites including:
 
Travel to the USA
A guide to International travel is available here:
 
 
Visiting the USA:

Exclusively for members

  • Member Discount

    ISCB Members enjoy discounts on conference registration (up to $150), journal subscriptions, book (25% off), and job center postings (free).

  • Why Belong

    Connecting, Collaborating, Training, the Lifeblood of Science. ISCB, the professional society for computational biology!

     

Supporting ISCB

Donate and Make a Difference

Giving never felt so good! Considering donating today.