Leading Professional Society for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
Connecting, Training, Empowering, Worldwide
Leading Professional Society for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
Connecting, Training, Empowering, Worldwide
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)
www.ohio.edu/cidds/welch/
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.
Additionally, these final opportunities still exist for the possibility of presenting your work at the conference:
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
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.
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
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
La Jolla, USA and Munich/Saarbruecken, Germany - The International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) announced today their letter to the Presidents of the European Commission, European Council and European Parliament stressing the importance of basic scientific research and the need to exempt this research from budget cuts. The organization, which represents over 3000 member scientists worldwide, supports research using advanced information technology to better understand complex biological systems and processes. This interdisciplinary scientific field is at the core of current scientific progress in many fields. The Society points out that the dominant scientific revolutions happening around the world today are precisely in this intersection of information technology and biology.
The Society advocates against devastating funding cuts to critical basic research. The letter stresses the fact, agreed upon in the scientific community, that project based research alone cannot produce the fundamental breeding ground necessary for breakthrough progress and creation of new economic market segments. It goes on to comment on the competitive nature of scientific research, and the unnecessary loss to the excellence developed throughout the laboratories of Europe should funding for basic research be cut. The Society urges the European Union to look to the success of national members in maintaining funding for critical scientific research, and do the same.
The full content of the letter can be viewed at www.iscb.org/images/stories/active-campaign/2012-Nov20-EC-letter-to-EU-urging-funding-basic-science.pdf
ISCB encourages its members and colleagues to share this Press Release and write immediately to their elected representatives to express their views on the importance of appropriate funding for basic scientific research.
About ISCB
The International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) is a scholarly society dedicated to advancing the scientific understanding of living systems through computation. The Society serves over 3,000 members from more than 70 countries.
Press Contacts:
Prof. Dr. Thomas Lengauer, Vice President, ISCB,
Prof. Dr. Burkhard Rost, President, ISCB,