POSTER PRESENTATIONS

Posters will be up for the duration of the conference with formal presentation on Monday, April 4 during the poster and networking reception.

CLICK HERE to download the PDF list of poster presentations (updated March 22, 2016).

About the posters:

• The poster space will be 90 x 120 cm (width x height), which corresponds to A0 VERTICAL format (or 16 pages in A4 format).
• Double-sided adhesive will be available on poster supports and in registration desk.

Please note that the poster session is on Monday 4th April at 17:50 and during the lunch on Tuesday 5th. So we kindly ask you to:

• Hang your poster anytime on Monday 4th April before the poster session.
• Please pick up your poster on Tuesday 5th April before 18:00 (6:00 pm).

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TECHNOLOGY TALKS

Tech Talk 1

Make Big Data an Asset not a Burden

Speaker: Dr. Wolfgang Mertz, CTO Life Sciences and Healthcare, EMC Isilon Systems Division

Abstract: NGS is about analyzing a big amount of data. Annotation specifically is not only one of the most data demanding parts of the workflow but also offers the potential to use traditionally coded algorithms in parallel with Hadoop based analysis, also known as Big Data Analysis. This presentation will show how EMC Isilon’s Data Lake helps Bio Scientists to do their work without having to become IT specialists to overcome the data challenges related to the NGS workflow.

CV: Wolfgang holds a PhD on computer aided engineering. In his more than 25 years in the IT industry he held various technical and strategic positions. He focuses on understanding the verticals’ specific processes, needs and applications which he then links to the IT product’s features and capabilities in order to achieve the best results for the customers. In his current role in the EMC ETD CTO Office he specializes mainly on Life Sciences, Healthcare and HPC. Wolfgang also follows the immense transformations IT is currently undergoing; this especially includes the new capabilities data lakes and big data offer.

Click here to learn more about EMC/IPM.

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Tech Talk 2

QIAGEN Sample to Insight: An introduction to the QIAGEN Bioinformatics Solutions



Presenter: Elodie Dubus, Ph.D

Description: Analysis of next generation sequencing data typically requires the use of a range of different open source algorithms and bioinformatics software applications. Particularly making maximum sense of several different datatypes, such as genomic and variant data, transcriptomic and epigenomic data, can be challenging. How can we at QIAGEN Bioinformatics help you with your data analysis workflow? In this presentation we will present our range of bioinformatics solutions that can take you from the assembly of raw NGS reads through to the discovery of clinically relevant variants and/or to the biological interpretation of differentially expressed isoforms. We will particularly highlight here our integrated and user friendly bioinformatics toolbox for the analysis, visualization and interpretation of multi-omics data:

- Biomedical Genomics Workbench - A flexible, scalable and customizable NGS data analysis application.
- Ingenuity® Pathway Analysis- A powerful tool for the analysis, integration, and interpretation of data derived from ‘omics experiments.
- Ingenuity Variant Analysis™ - Designed for variant filtering, prioritization and discovery.

Click here to learn more about QIAGEN

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Tech Talk 3

Atos as a Global IT partner for Genomics projects



Presenter:  Josema CAVANILLAS, Bull Atos Technologies

To face the demands of an ageing population, the current healthcare system has to evolve towards a sustainable model focused on patient wellness. This “revolution” will only be possible by transferring the breakthroughs from the bench to the bedside yielding as a result the implementation of a new paradigm based on 4 pillars: predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory (P4 Medicine).

In this environment it is needed a catalyser in the described revolution by building a solid technological bridge to allow P4 Medicine to be a reality in few years.
 
Omics sciences, and in particular genomics, stand out in life sciences field. Genomics has developed at a very high-speed due to the dramatic drop in sequencing costs. When the sequencing costs reaches 100$, the way will be paved for each person’s genome to be sequenced as a part of standard healthcare procedures.

In the coming years, the world will be inundated with individual omics data. Omics avalanche introduces significant sustainability challenges which can only be addressed by means of a blend between Bioinformatics together with Information and Communication Technologies.
 
To reach these challenges, OMICS (Omics & Medical Integrated Compute System) solutions from Atos overcome the challenges that the translation of genomics to clinical practice possess. The technological bridge that connects cutting-edge genomics with every day healthcare.

Click here to learn more about Atos.
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Tech Talk 4

End-to-End RNA-Seq Solutions for Discovery



Presenter:  Aida SOLER, Marketing Technical Specialist, ILLUMINA

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OP 14

Accurate and Rapid Clinical Whole-Genome Sequence (WGS) Interpretation with VAAST and PHEVOR using Omicia for the UK’s 100,000 Genome Project



Charlene Son Rigby¹, Roxanne Diaz¹, Andrew Guo¹, Anna Lewis¹, Marco Falcioni¹, Edward S. Kiruluta¹, Mark Yandell², Martin G. Reese<sup>1

1</sup>Omicia Inc., Oakland, CA, US, ²Department of Human Genetics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, US

Prioritizing genes in tomorrow’s millions of whole-genome sequences will be a challenging problem. Genomics England has been charged by the NHS to sequence the genomes of 100,000 patients (100,000 Genome Project). The goal is better, earlier diagnosis and personalized care for rare diseases, cancer and infectious diseases. The project started in 2015, and here we report the analysis workflows developed for GeL for the first rare disease cases. These cases were jointly analyzed using the Omicia Opal platform to identify genes and causative variants for rare disease. Proband symptoms are described using Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO) terms.

Omicia’s Opal platform is a comprehensive analysis platform that incorporates variant knowledge from over 90 sources. Variants are prioritized using the VAAST and PHEVOR; algorithms developed in collaboration with the University of Utah. VAAST integrates sequence conservation, genetic consequence, and allele frequency in a probabilistic framework to identify disease-causing alleles. PHEVOR then combines HPO-based patient phenotype descriptions with VAAST results to re-rank the variants for still greater diagnostic power.

We will present our analysis workflow within Opal and explain how it has reduced analysis times for a typical WGS from days to hours. In particular, we have optimized the computational portions of our pipeline, allowing us to process a WGS in less than 30min. Omicia teams created a clinical whole-genome workflow for efficient and accurate, but conservative clinical diagnosis. We will show performance results for VAAST/PHEVOR compared to standard analysis approaches. The talk will give a first look as to what to expect for the remaining 2,000 genomes projected in Phase I of the project - insights that should also prove valuable for large-scale clinical exome and genome projects world-wide. 

Click here to learn more about Omicia.

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Tech Talk 5

Managing SW-Dependencies with Docker Containers for Large-Scale Bio-Technology Workloads



Presenter:  Fritz Ferstl, CTO, Univa

Abstract: Container technology, Docker in particular, has driven enormous progress in DevOps environments and in micro-service-based architectures. Yet containers also deliver benefits for other classes of application scenarios such as technical and scientific computing workflows. This presentation showcases a bio-technology workflow which has been containerized in order to address challenges around versioning as well as software layer and system configuration dependencies. The containerized workflow needs to run on a large-scale cluster and thus was integrated with the leading-edge workflow and resource management system driving the cluster. It was possible to prove equitable performance over the non-containerized workflow while yielding much increased flexibility. Furthermore, we will discuss the lessons learnt and the challenges that had to be surpassed to achieve those results. We will also present on-going improvements to the integration and their benefits such as more sophisticated policies as well as advanced workload life-cycle monitoring and control.

Click here to learn more about Univa.

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LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR SPONSORS

SILVER:

QIAGEN Bioinformatics is powered by CLC bio, Ingenuity, and BIOBASE. We offer bioinformatics software tools for next generation sequencing (NGS) data analysis and interpretation. Our solutions are designed to be universal, so you can mix and match the technologies best suited to your needs.  For more information please visit www.qiagenbioinformatics.com.



Univa is the leading innovator of workload management solutions that optimize throughput and performance of applications, containers and services. Univa manages workloads automatically by maximizing shared resources and enabling enterprises to scale compute resources across on-premise, hybrid and cloud infrastructures. Univa's solutions help hundreds of companies to manage thousands of applications and run billions of tasks every day to obtain actionable insights and achieve faster time-to-results. Univa is headquartered in Chicago, with offices in Canada and Germany.


BRONZE:

COPPER:

Omicia Inc. is advancing genomics to the clinic. Omicia enables any clinical testing lab to develop a comprehensive genomic testing service and provide high quality clinical interpretation at scale. Unlike systems that were developed for research studies, our Opal Clinical™ informatics, interpretation and reporting platform combines an automated variant annotation and prioritization engine with a rules-based variant classification system to significantly improve the accuracy and turnaround time of clinical reporting.

POSTER AWARDS:

GENERAL:

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POST CONFERENCE WORKSHOP

The post conference workshop is currently at capacity and SOLD OUT.  To be placed on the wait list, please complete the standard conference registration with payment. Submit a request to be added to the wait list using the wait list form. We will contact you in the order of the wait list if space opens up.

Reproducible genomic data analysis using short and long-read RNAseq data

Description of the workshop:

The purpose of the workshop is to introduce a framework for the processing of NGS datasets with a special focus on bioinformatics analysis of RNA-seq data. During the workshop attendees will get familiar with the current transcriptomic technologies producing short (Illumina) and long (PacBio) reads - their advantages, limitations and possible applications to monitor gene expression. This will be a combined tutorial and hands-on session. Attendees will be able to perform analysis themselves.

In the tutorial we will explain basic concepts of RNAseq technologies, features of the reference gene annotation, an overview of the available pipelines used in the consortium projects, such as ENCODE and Blueprint. Related to this, we will explain the problem of uniform and reproducible processing of large amount of NGS data. We will introduce the basic concepts of a framework for computational pipelines and will show how it can be used to simplify the writing of RNA-Seq pipelines in portable manner across different execution environments.

In the practical hands-on part we will describe how to write pipelines in a reproducible manner by using NextFlow - a pipeline management tool. Within the part of bioinformatic analysis we will explain common data formats (fastq, bam/sam, gtf, bed, bigWig), will show how to perform quality control of the transcriptomic data, read mapping, gene quantification and some downstream analysis. For the execution of the computational analysis we will use GRAPE, a Nextflow-based RNAseq pipeline environment. Within the pipeline,  STAR will be used for aligning the RNAseq reads and creating the signal files and RSEM for producing isoform and gene quantifications, thus following the  ENCODE3 production workflow for RNAseq data . The practical part will also include visualisation of the RNAseq signal in the UCSC genome browser.

Requirements: Basic linux knowledge (shell usage, basic commands) will be essential for understanding the hands-on content.

Teachers:

Anna Vlasova ^1,2
Paolo Di Tommaso ^1,2
Emilio Palumbo ^1,2
Julien Lagarde ^1,2
Philip Lobb <sup>3

1</sup> Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Dr. Aiguader 88, Barcelona 08003, Spain
² Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), Barcelona, Spain
³ Field Bioinformatic Support, Europe, Pacific Biosciences

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SPONSORS

SILVER:

BRONZE:

COPPER:

POSTER AWARDS:

GENERAL:

PAPER PRIZE:

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SUBMISSIONS

Barcelona NGS invites ABSTRACT submissions for original research and previous published research, as well as Posters for presentation at the conference. The program will address a wide range of issues including RNASeq-based genome annotation, non-coding RNA analysis, proteomics data integration and data visualization. Sizeable space is dedicated to submission-based presentations from the below topics.

Topics include:

• State of the art technologies, and technologies under development
• Novel software and algorithms
• Novel applications of NGS technologies in genomics and biology
• Post genome sequencing analysis, including RNA analysis, transcription factor binding sites profiling, histone modifications, nucleosome positioning, copy number variation, genotyping, RNA structure, dynamics of transcription and translation, etc.
• Research breakthroughs based on exhaustive applications of NGS
• Clinical and translational applications
• Applications to agriculture and biotechnology
• Novel Reference genomes

The conference will also aim to encompass the associated computational challenges:

• Novel algorithms, methods and pipelines
• Comparative benchmarks of methods
• New visualisation software for NGS

Plan to submit your research to this engaging conference!

DEADLINE TO SUBMIT LATE-BREAKING ABSTRACT IS JANUARY 22, 2016!

Barcelona NGS invites abstracts for consideration for oral presentations or participation in a poster session. Abstracts may be either original unpublished work or original work that was published or accepted for publication at a high-impact journal. Published and un-published original works will be selected on the basis of the extended abstracts and proposed for either an oral or a poster presentation.

Authors with un-published original work selected for presentation at the conference will be invited to submit a full-length paper or extended abstract with full data for peer-review to published* in the ISCB Community Journal, NGS-BARCELONA channel. All Posters will also be invited to submit in poster format to the NGS-BARCELONA channel.

* Authors are responsible for publishing fees. ISCB members receive a 20% discount.

Late-breaking Abstract Submission deadline: January 22, 2016, 11:59 pm (Pacific Time)

Abstracts received before the due date will be considered for oral presentations and/or poster presentations. If your abstract is accepted, it will be included in an abstract booklet that will be distributed to all conference participants. Accepted original research abstracts will also be invited to publish in the ISCB Community Journal at the authors’ expense.

HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR ABSTRACT

Please use this link to EasyChair to submit your abstract. You will be asked to provide information about yourself and your coauthors, including name, e-mail address, and affiliation. Please check one box for corresponding author to indicate who would be speaking or would be primarily responsible for your poster. You will also be asked to provide an abstract title, the text of your abstract, and keywords.

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Publishing in the ISCB Community Journal

All selected oral submissions will have the opportunity to be published as a long abstract (see guidelines), full research paper (see guidelines) or any other relevant article type such as a data note or a software article in the Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) channel, guest edited by Cédric Notredame, Centre for Genomic Regulation, and Jen Harrow, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. This channel is part of the ISCB Community Journal (ISCB CommJ), which is published on F1000Research’s open science platform.

Publication in the channel will be an author-led process and all articles are published open access. The publishing and peer review processes are fully transparent and authors are asked to include detailed descriptions of methods and to provide full and easy access to source data underlying the results to improve reproducibility.

Publishing in the ISCB CommJ brings many benefits. Firstly work can be published in a matter of days after submission. All data and software code will also be made accessible to the reader and stored in the appropriate repositories. Once published the paper will then formally peer reviewed by invited peers from the community who will openly review the articles, and these reviews will be published alongside the article. As an author there is always the opportunity to have a dialogue with and respond to the reviewers comments and make revisions as necessary in new versions of the article. Once the article has passed peer review it will be indexed in Pubmed, Scopus etc.

Any posters or presentation slides that are presented can also be freely deposited in the channel, allowing you to extend the visibility of your work beyond the conference hall. The Next Generation Sequencing channel has been created to foster the rapid sharing of, and debate around next generation sequencing and aims to become a hub of research for the topic.

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SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES

Please take a moment to review the opportunities below
or click here for a pdf of the prospectus.

Contact Andrew P. Falter, Exhibit and Sponsor Sales, ISCB, at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to confirm your presence at NGS 2016 and meet your target audience.

Click here for the Sponsor/Exhibit form.

Hosted by the International Society for Computational Biology and the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), the Next Generation Sequencing Conference 2016 (NGS 2016) is a dedicated meeting on cutting-­-edge approaches to the processing and analysis of Next Generation Sequencing data.

Topics to include:
• State of the art technologies, and technologies under development
• Novel software and algorithms
• Novel applications of NGS technologies in genomics and biology
• Post genome sequencing analysis, including RNA analysis, transcription factor binding sites profiling, histone modifications, nucleosome positioning, copy number variation, genotyping, RNA structure, dynamics of transcription and translation, etc.
• Research breakthroughs based on exhaustive applications of NGS.
• Clinical and translational applications
• Applications to agriculture and biotechnology
• Societal implications: forensic law, sociology research, history, etc.
• Economical impacts

The conference will also aim to encompass the associated computational challenges:
• Novel algorithms, methods and pipelines
• Comparative benchmarks of methods
• Hardware developments specific to NGS
• High performance computing in NGS
• Computation in portable NGS devices, micro- and nano-NGS devices
• Computation during data acquisition

The goal of NGS 2016 conference is to bring together bioinformatics researchers and biologists facing new high-throughput sequencing challenges. The conference will feature 6 scientific sessions and 5 prominent keynote speakers.

On average, most of attendees are from Europe with remaining attendees from the United States, Canada, Asia, Africa, & Australia. Total attendees expected in 2016: 300

This year’s conference will take place in April 4-6, 2016 in Barcelona Spain.

It is a dedicated meeting on cutting-edge approaches to the processing and analysis of Genome Annotation methods. It will bring together bioinformatics researchers involved in the development of genome annotation methods, along with biologists interested in the establishment and annotation of new reference genomes. The conference will address a wide range of issues including RNASeq-based genome annotation, non-coding RNA analysis, proteomics data integration and data visualization. Sizeable space will also be dedicated to emerging and future trends in genomics including ecosystem analysis and novel reference genomes.

Sponsorship Opportunities

NGS 2016 is seeking sponsorship from institutions looking to engage with a dynamic audience that specializes in high-throughput sequencing and next generation sequencing data arenas.

Sponsorship packages are designed to provide maximum exposure. Customized packages are available to fit any marketing budget.

Contact Andrew P. Falter, Exhibit and Sponsor Sales, ISCB, at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to confirm your presence at NGS 2016 and meet your target audience.

SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES

Sign up for Gold

- Two (2) complimentary conference registrations
- Logo slide during opening session
- Logo with link to organization on conference website index page
- Logo with link to organization on conference website sponsorship page
- Sponsor in conference program with organization name & description
- Half-page black and white advertisement in conference program

Sign up for Silver

- One (1) complimentary conference registrations
- Logo slide during opening session
- Logo with link to organization on conference website index page
- Logo with link to organization on conference website sponsorship page
- Sponsor in conference program with organization name & description
- Quarter-page black and white advertisement in conference program

Sign up for Bronze

- One (1) complimentary conference registrations
- Logo slide during opening session
- Logo with link to organization on conference website index page
- Logo with link to organization on conference website sponsorship page
- Sponsor in conference program with organization name & description
- Quarter-page black and white advertisement in conference program

Sign up for Copper

- One (1) complimentary conference registrations
- Logo slide during opening session
- Logo with link to organization on conference website index page
- Logo with link to organization on conference website sponsorship page
- Sponsor in conference program with organization name & description

• - One (1) exhibit exhibitor showcase display space
• - One (1) 20 minute technology track (scheduled by the organizers)
• - Organization recognized in ISCB Annual Report with logo and link to preferred URL
• - Electronic list of conference delegates pre-event
• - Electronic list of conference delegates post-event
• - Brochure in delegate registration bag
• - Discounted registration at 25% off regular registration fee
• - Half-page advertisement in ISCB Newsletter (full color, issue of choice, Gold Level only)
• - Quarter-page advertisement in ISCB Newsletter (Silver and Bronze only, full color, issue of choice)
• - Up to 5 job posts on ISCB website
• - 50% discount off of a Quarter-page advertisement in conference program (black & white)
• - One complimentary banner ad on website (to run for 90 days)

Sign up for Additional Opportunities

Organizations will benefit by acknowledgement in the conference program, onsite signage, on the conference website, and through delegate appreciation of your support.

- Breakfast: $2250
- Refreshment Break: $1750
- Lunch: $3000
- Name Badge Lanyards: $3,000
- Inclusion of marketing materials in delegate bags: $500
- Purchase pre-conference registration list: $500
- Purchase post-conference registration list: $700
- Delegate Bags: $1000
- Keynote Speaker Sponsorship: $2000

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