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,
As has been reported widely, the
Research Works Act (RWA) that was introduced to the U.S. House of
Representatives late last year was withdrawn by the bill's sponsors on February
27th. ISCB took a strong stand against this bill that posed the latest threat to
public access to federally funded research results. ISCB President, Burkhard
Rost, together with Richard Lathrop, ISCB Public Affairs & Policies Committee
Chair, and Scott Markel, ISCB Publications and Communications Committee Chair,
signed a letter expressing our opposition and emphasizing the importance of the
ISCB
Public Policy Statement on Open Access to Scientific and Technical Research
Literature. The letter was personalized and sent to each of the 39 members
of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and the
content of the letter was shared with all ISCB members and many of our
scientific colleagues around the world. As a result, several scientific news
publications and blogs reported on ISCB's efforts, and we considered it a
victory when Elsevier withdrew its support of RWA days later and the bill was
withdrawn soon thereafter.
Although the tides may be turning in favor of
public access in the long run, it is doubtful that this will be the last veiled
attempt to obstruct such access. If you are a member of ISCB and have not yet
signed on to our policy statement, you can still do so at any time via the link
to current signatories on the policy page noted above.
Thank you,
BJ Morrison McKay, ISCB Executive Officer
on behalf of Burkhard Rost,
Richard Lathrop, Scott Markel, and the ISCB Board of Directors
Attention all ISCB members,
colleagues, and past GLBIO attendees,
The final opportunity to submit
your work for presentation at the
The Great
Lakes Bioinformatics Conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan in May is now.
* MARC travel fellowships are available for accepted
presenters (oral and poster) who meet the following criteria: (1) Presenter is a
US citizen or permanent resident, and (2) is from an underrepresented minority
group, and (3) is a student (graduate or undergraduate), post-baccalaureate, or
postdoctoral fellow, and (4) is the first author and will be presenting the oral
or poster presentation at GLBIO 2012. MARC funding is also available for groups
of one faculty member/mentor plus up to two students or post-baccalaureates form
a minority institution. MARC funding for GLBIO is possible through ISCB's
membership in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology
(FASEB). Full details are available on the Travel Fellowships page of the GLBIO
website. If you do not meet the eligibility requirements but know someone who
could, please pass this notice to them immediately so they can meet the poster
submission and MARC fellowship application deadlines before they expire.
We look forward to receiving your submission today and to welcoming you to Ann
Arbor in May!
Sincerely,
Your GLBIO 2012 Steering/Organizing
Committee
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