ISCB Education Committee Seeks Input on Identifying a Consensus Bioinformatics Curriculum

Dear ISCB Members and Colleagues,

The ISCB Education Committee began working on a number of activities last fall related to developing recommendations for a bioinformatics curriculum. We have 3 subcommittees that are described below. A recap of this initiative can be found in the email included at the bottom of this message (dated September 14, 2011).

After completing an initial survey of the Education committee, we have drafted a manuscript that we would like to share with you. The manuscript is available on the blog mentioned below. We are interested in getting your comments on this draft. While we are soliciting feedback, we will continue to analyze the information we are collecting in our subcommittees and hope to incorporate this information in an updated document. We would be happy to have you join in this effort.

A blog has been set up to gather input: http://bioinfocurriculum.blogspot.com/. Login is not required.

We are particularly interested in hearing from you about:
1) ideas for publicizing these efforts and involving a broader cross-section of the computational biology community
2) the draft curriculum (a link to the document is provided on the blog page)
3) the plans to refine the curriculum (see the final paragraph of document)

To post your comments, you can click on the 'comment' link at the bottom of the blog. Please provide your comments by March 30th, 2012.

We are looking ahead to Long Beach and are organizing a Birds of a Feather (BoF) at ISMB 2012 to discuss bioinformatics curriculum guidelines (http://www.iscb.org/ismb2012-program/birds-of-a-feather). Perhaps you can join us in Long Beach to continue this discussion.

Thanks for your interest in this effort. We value your input.

Sincerely,
Fran Lewitter, Lonnie Welch and Russell Schwartz


SUBCOMMITTEE 1 (job opportunities):
Leader: Lonnie Welch
Members: Murlidharan Nair, Steve Jennings
Recent activity: review job postings on ISCB web site for skills required

SUBCOMMITTEE 2 (existing curricula):
Leader: Russell Schwartz
Members: Erik Bongcam-Rudloff, Celia van Gelder, Antoine H.C. van Kampen, Scott J. Emrich, Murlidharan Nair, Shifra Ben-Dor, Erich Baker
Recent Activity: review existing curricula at for Bioinformatics degree granting programs

SUBCOMMITTEE 3 (core facilities):
Leader: Fran Lewitter
Members: Erik Bongcam-Rudloff, Scott J. Emrich, Shifra Ben-Dor, Lakshmanan Iyer, Erich Baker, Winston Hide, Takis Benos
Recent Activity: survey bioinformatics core facility directors to regarding hiring practices

=======================
From: Welch, Lonnie
Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2011 10:56 PM
To: 'Fran Lewitter'; education
Subject: RE: ISCB Education Committee initiatives and minutes from 7/17/11 meeting

Dear Members of the ISCB Education Committee,

I would like to invite your participation in our committee's task force on curriculum.

During spring and summer of 2011, we constructed a straw man curriculum that is based on a survey of our committee and of the EMBnet community. The result of this effort is being written up in a report for the ISCB column in PLoS Computational Biology.

We plan to refine the curriculum via the following tasks:
1. Survey job opportunities (led by Lonnie Welch)
2. Survey existing curricula (led by Russell Schwartz)
3. Survey perspectives of Directors of Bioinformatics Core Facilities and biological researchers (led by Fran Lewitter)

We plan to perform the surveys during fall 2011 and to incorporate our findings into the EduComm bioinformatics curriculum during winter 2012.

Please let us know if you would like to be involved in this effort. In your reply, specify which of the 3 tasks interest you (feel free to select as many of the 3 as you wish).

Best regards,
Lonnie Welch
--
Lonnie R. Welch, Stuckey Professor
Director of the Bioinformatics Laboratory
School of Elec. Eng. & Computer Science,
Biomedical Engineering Program,
Molecular and Cellular Biology Program
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
740-593-1575 (office); 740-818-9521 (mobile)
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
www.ohio.edu/cidds/welch/

ISMB 2012 Registration Now Open and Last call for SCS8 Abstracts

Dear ISCB Members and Colleagues,

We invite you to register now for the 20th Anniversary ISMB conference being held July 15-17, 2012, in Long Beach, California. The link below will take you to a page full of details, including options, pricing, and early registration discount deadline, as well as to the online registration form itself.

ISMB 2012 Registration

Additionally, these final opportunities still exist for the possibility of presenting your work at the conference:

Student Council Symposium - deadline April 2nd

Technology Track - deadline April 20th

Late Posters - deadline April 20th

The 8th annual Student Council Symposium is a student-organized event featuring keynote lectures, oral presentations and a poster session tailored to undergraduate and graduate students as well as post-docs in computational biology and related disciplines. SCS presenters are eligible to apply for special Travel Fellowship funding secured and awarded by the Student Council.

The Technology Track provides organizations the opportunity to showcase their software and/or hardware relevant to the bioinformatics/molecular biology community. Submissions selected for presentation are required to pay a Tech Track fee and will be given a 25- or 50-minute time slot based on their status as a non- or for-profit organization.

Late Posters will be displayed and scheduled for presentation within the regular poster sessions of the conference. All posters are intended to convey a scientific result in any area of computational biology, and must include original work that is unpublished or published after August 1, 2011. While purely experimental work is especially encouraged, advertisements for commercial software packages are prohibited.

The ISMB 2012 conference agenda is currently taking shape, and you can visit the Schedule Overview in order to begin organizing your travel plans. The Program page of the site includes links to details about the conference tracks and sessions, and is being updated regularly as decisions are made on acceptances from submissions to the various tracks. And finally, the General Info page includes links to helpful information such as housing, tourist info, and the availability of child/dependent care to ensure your conference experience is both successful and enjoyable.

The ISMB 2012 Conference Co-Chairs and every member of the Scientific Organizing Committee look forward to welcoming you to Long Beach soon!

Sincerely,

ISMB 2012 Conference Co-Chairs:
Terry Gaasterland, University of California, San Diego, United States
Richard Lathrop, University of California, Irvine, United States
Burkhard Rost, Technical University Munich, Germany

Last Call for ISCB Board of Directors Nominations

Board Nominations Deadline: April 6, 2012

Also in progress: ISCB Officer and Student Council Leader Nominations - deadline June 3, 2012

As a reminder, the International Society for Computational Biology is encouraging members to submit nominations for the Society's Board of Directors; the Officer positions of Vice President, Treasurer, and Secretary; and the Student Council Leadership positions of Chair, Vice-Chair, Secretary, Treasurer, and SC Rep to the ISCB Board. Nominations are submitted at www.iscb.org/nominate (you must login to your membership record to access the nomination form). In all cases, self nominations will not be accepted.

If you know of excellent candidates that meet the eligibility requirements below, please be sure to submit your nomination(s) right away.

• In order to be eligible for candidacy as a Director a person must be or become an ISCB member in good standing no later than the date he or she accepts the nomination. Acceptance is then completed by submitting a candidate statement by May 4, 2012.
• All Director candidates must pledge to make every reasonable effort to attend the bi-monthly Board teleconference beginning with a training period in October 2012 and the annual in-person Board of Directors meeting (held at the ISMB conference) at their own expense through completion of the three-year term that begins January 21, 2013.
• In order to be eligible to be an Officer candidate a person must have served on the ISCB Board of Directors for at least one year prior to January 2013, and be an ISCB member in good standing, or renew a lapsed membership no later than June 24, 2012.
• All Officer candidates must pledge to make every reasonable effort to attend the weekly Executive Committee teleconferences beginning with a training period by mid-October, 2012, the bi-monthly Board teleconferences beginning with a training period in October 2012, and the annual in-person Board of Directors meeting (held at the ISMB conference) at their own expense through completion of the two-year Officer term that begins January 21, 2013.
• The elected Officers will also serve concurrently on the Board of Directors for a term that ends January 21, 2016.
  

Nominations for Board of Directors will be accepted through April 6, 2012. Election of Board members will take place during the annual ISCB Board of Directors meeting in July 2012.

Nominations for Officers and Student Council Leaders will be accepted through June 3, 2012. Election of the Officers and Student Council Leaders will take place via online voting by the membership in July, 2012, including availability to a dedicated voting booth at the ISMB conference.

Each nomination requires the name, affiliation, and email address of the nominee, along with an assurance that the nominee meets the qualifications and is willing to stand for election for the position in question. The nomination must also include a few sentences of justification that makes the strongest case possible for the nominee.

Full information regarding the 2012 nominations/elections timeline, call for nominations, and Director and Officer responsibilities can be found at www.iscb.org/iscb-leadership-a-staff-/officers-and-board-directors/nomination-election-procedures.

We are looking forward to an active participation by the ISCB membership in the nominations and election process, and we thank you in advance for your qualified nominations.

Respectfully,

Dietlind Gerloff, Scott Markel, and Anna Tramontano
Co-Chairs, ISCB Nominations Committee

GLBIO 2013 - Registration Is Now Open

Dear ISCB Members, Colleagues, and Past GLBIO Attendees:

The Great Lakes Bioinformatics Conference is ISCB's annual event focused on providing an interdisciplinary forum for the discussion of research findings and methods within the North American Great Lakes region. The conference fosters long-term relationships, provides networking opportunities for researchers from within the region, and creates a collaborative environment for participants from around the world. The 2013 program has been retooled with new elements that will increase the opportunities to present research at many different stages of development. GLBIO will kick off with tutorials and include a full program of keynotes, selected original research presentations, highlights of published works, flash presentations and posters. Your participation is encouraged!

Registration is now open at:  www.iscb.org/glbio2013-register and early registration pricing is available through April 14, 2013.

In addition, all Calls for Presentations are now open: 

Original Research Papers (Proceedings)  Deadline: Jan 14, 2013

Highlight Presentations (previously published papers)  Deadline: Jan 14, 2013

Flash Presentations (abstracts)   Deadline: Jan 14, 2013

Poster Presentations (abstracts)  Deadline: Mar 22, 2013

GLBIO topic areas include: Algorithm Development & Machine Learning; Databases and Ontologies; Text Mining & Natural Language Processing; Bioimage Analysis; Biological Networks; Chemical Biology; Clinical Informatics & Epidemiology; Disease Models & Molecular Medicine; Evolutionary, Comparative, and Meta-Genomics, Gene Regulation & Transcriptomics; Mass Spectrometry & Proteomics; Personalized Genetics and Genomics: Exome, Genome, Transcriptome; RNA & Protein: Structure, Modification, Localizations, Interaction, Function.

This year's keynote presenters exemplify the diversity of the field within this region: Ivet Bahar of University of Pittsburgh; Ziv Bar-Joseph of Carnegie Mellon University (and recipient of the 2012 ISCB Overton Prize); Jing Li of Case Western Reserve University; and Isidore Rigoutsos of Thomas Jefferson University.

We look forward to your participation! Please help spread the word by sharing this information with your colleagues and collaborators.

Sincerely,

Bruce Aronow, Elodie Ghedin, and Russell Schwartz

GLBIO 2013 Conference Chairs