Call for ISCB Fellows Nominations - deadline April 30th

Dear ISCB Member,

Since 2009 the leadership of the International Society for Computational Biology has been honoring our most distinctive members as Fellows. Nominations for the 2011 ISCB Class of Fellows are now being sought (self nominations are not allowed) to identify those members that have made exceptional contributions to the field of computational biology/bioinformatics. If you know of a member that you believe has earned his or her place among ISCB's Fellows, please nominate today.

Information about the ISCB Fellows program and selection criteria can be found at www.iscb.org/iscb-fellows.

The nomination form is available at www.iscb.org/fellow-nomination (as only members can nominate, login is required).

The nomination deadline is April 30, 3011.

Thank you for your considerate nomination!

ISCB Call for Leadership Nominations Now Open

Board Nominations Deadline: May 6, 2011 President-Elect ("Officer") Nominations Deadline: June 5, 2011

The International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) is encouraging members and affiliates to submit nominations for the Society’s Board of Directors and President-elect. Nominations are submitted at www.iscb.org/nominate (you must login to your membership record to access the nomination form - if you are a member of an affiliated regional group and do not have an ISCB membership, please encourage a leader of your regional group to submit a nomination from your region). 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 by submitting a candidate statement (nomination acceptance/candidate statement is required by June 5, 2011).
• All Director candidates must pledge to make every reasonable effort to attend the bi-monthly Board teleconference beginning with a training period in October 2011 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, 2012.
• In order to be eligible to be a President-elect candidate (referred to as an "Officer") a person must have served on the ISCB Board of Directors for at least one year prior to January 2012, and be an ISCB member in good standing, or renew an ISCB lapsed membership no later than June 26, 2011.
• All Officer candidates must pledge to make every reasonable effort to attend the weekly Executive Committee teleconferences beginning with a training period in mid-October, 2011, the bi-monthly Board teleconferences beginning with a training period in December 2011, and the annual in-person Board of Directors meeting (held at the ISMB conference) at their own expense through completion of the one year President-elect term followed by a two year President term that begins January 21, 2012.
• The elected Officer 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 May 6, 2011. Election of Board members will take place during the annual ISCB Board of Directors meeting in July 2011.

Nominations for Officer will be accepted through June 5, 2011. Election of the Officer will take place via online voting by the membership in July, 2011, including during the ISMB conference.

Each nomination requires the name, affiliation, and e-mail 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 2011 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 I thank you in advance for your qualified nominations.

Respectfully,

Dietlind Gerloff
Chair, ISCB Nominations Committee

ISCB Releases 2011 Accomplishments Report

Click here to download the ISCB 2011 Accomplishments report (.pdf)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Renowned scientific computing expert to speak at international life sciences conference on Semantic Web and Big Data in Cambridge, MA

LA JOLLA, CA – Pioneering scientist and best selling author Stephen Wolfram will deliver a keynote talk at next week’s Conference on Semantics in Healthcare and Life Sciences (CSHALS) in Cambridge, MA.

Wolfram is an internationally recognized authority on complex systems and knowledge base computing. His work in the early and mid-1980s focused on understanding complex systems and resulted in discovering important connections between computation and nature. He is the chief designer of the Mathematica technical computing software on workflow applications, and author of the bestseller "A New Kind of Science," first released in 2002 and now freely available online. As president and CEO of Wolfram Research, he launched the Wolfram|Alpha Central Knowledge Engine in 2009 that aims to use computational tools to make the world’s knowledge base accessible to all. His research and software developments continually tackle the specific challenges being addressed by researchers attending the CSHALS meeting: The Semantic Web that promotes common formats for all data on the Web; and Big Data that seeks to manage datasets that have grown too large to work with using common tools and applications.

Wolfram’s keynote is part of a roster of keynote presentations throughout the CSHALS conference from noted scientists, including: knowledge representation and reasoning specialist Rinke Hoekstra of the University of Amsterdam, informatics program director Isaac (Zak) Kohane of Harvard Medical School’s Children’s Hospital, biologist and bioinformatics specialist Barend Mons of the University of Rotterdam and the Leiden University Medical Centre in The Netherlands, and research specialist Chris Welty of IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center. The conference also features 18 presentations from other invited speakers and those selected through peer reviewed abstract submissions.

About CSHALS
Now in its fifth year, CSHALS, an annual conference of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB), is the premier annual event focused on the use of semantic technologies in the pharmaceutical industry, including hospitals/healthcare institutions and academic research labs. This year’s gathering will be held February 23-24 at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and includes a pre-conference tutorial and scientific posterreception on February 22nd. For more information visit the conference website at www.iscb.org/cshals2012.

About ISCB
The International Society for Computational Biology is a nonprofit scholarly society dedicated to advancing the scientific understanding of living systems through computation. Based in La Jolla, California, at the San Diego Supercomputer Center on the campus of the University of California, San Diego, the ISCB has a global membership of 3,000 researchers from 70 countries. For more information, visit www.iscb.org.

Press Contact
BJ Morrison McKay
ISCB Executive Officer
+1-760-522-8805
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