May 04: 2009 Award Winners Featured: Webb Miller and Trey Ideker

ISMB/ECCB 2009 Live Blog

During the ISMB/ECCB 2009 conference in Stockholm the ISCB, for the first time, facilitated a blogging forum and actively encouraged bloggers to comment on the conference and the scientific program. The blogs were visible on our main portal site, in the detailed program pages and on the hosting server at FriendFeed. The blogging community turned out to be very active and a large number of talks collected numerous comments with a peek of about 230 comments for Prof. Thomas Lengauer's keynote talk.

You can still access the blogs either on the conference website here or on the FriendFeed server here.

The ISCB is very happy that our experiment was taken up so positively and we would like to thank all the bloggers for their input, which was highly  appreciated and contributed significantly to the overall conference experience for bloggers and non-bloggers alike. We certainly plan to repeat this for ISMB 2010 in Boston and have collected some ideas on how to improve and extend the service for ISMB and other ISCB conferences.

ISMB/ECCB 2009 Conference Blogging

Calling all Bloggers!

Anyone can then join that feed to participate in real-time blogging of the talk with colleagues that might be seated on the opposite side of the aisle, or the opposite side of the globe! You do not need to be attending ISMB/ECCB in Stockholm to blog along with the rest of them.

By embracing blogging as a valuable conference activity we hope to help speed the dissemination of the science presented in Stockholm.

If you are not already subscribed to FriendFeed and think you might want to participate in this activity, sign up in advance and get ready to jump right into the discussions without delay!

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 includes New NIH Challenge Grants in Health and Science Research

The February 20, 2009 issue of the FASEB Washington Update newsletter includes information on the following of note for ISCB members interested in applying for new NIH grant funding availability:

NIH is designating at least $200 million of the funds it received from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the “stimulus bill”) in FYs 2009 - 2010 for a new initiative called the NIH Challenge Grants in Health and Science Research. The new program is expected to fund 200 or more grants, contingent upon the submission of a sufficient number of scientifically meritorious applications. This program will support research on 15 high priority topics within broad challenge areas that address specific scientific and health research challenges in biomedical and behavioral research that will benefit from significant 2-year jumpstart funds. Challenge Areas, defined by the NIH, focus on specific knowledge gaps, scientific opportunities, new technologies, data generation, or research methods that would benefit from an influx of funds to quickly advance the area in significant ways. The research in these areas should have a high impact in biomedical or behavioral science and/or public health. The NIH Challenge Grant information is now live on the NIH Web site at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/funding/challenge_award/. Please note that the RFA includes the following important deadlines:

• Release/Posted Date: March 4, 2009
  
• Opening Date: March 27, 2009 (Earliest date an application may be submitted to Grants.gov)
  
  
• Letters of Intent Receipt Date(s): Not applicable
  
  
• NOTE: On-time submission requires that applications be successfully submitted to Grants.gov no later than 5:00 p.m. local time (of the applicant institution/organization).
  
  
• Application Due Date(s): April 27, 2009

• Peer Review Date(s): June/July 2009
  
  
• Council Review Date(s): August 2009
  
  
• Earliest Anticipated Start Date(s): September 30, 2009
  
  
• Additional Information To Be Available Date (Activation Date): Not Applicable
  
  
• Expiration Date: April 28, 2009

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