Call for Proposals: Special Interest Groups


Special Interest Groups Chair: Hershel Safer, Rehovot, Israel

We invite you to submit a proposal to organize a Special Interest Group (SIG) meeting at the ISMB 2010 conference, which will be held at the Hynes Convention Center, Boston, USA, July 9 - 13, 2010.

 

Special Interest Group Meeting (SIGs) submissions should be submitted via the online submission system here prior to December 1, 2009.

 

A SIG meeting is a one- or two-day focused workshop. It should provide a broad and/or deep perspective on developments in a field of research, and is intended as a way to address a topic more extensively than can be done in the main conference.

Follow these links to see examples of previous SIG meetings:

 

ISMB/ECCB 2009 (Stockholm)
ISMB 2008 (Toronto)
ISMB/ECCB 2007 (Vienna)

A Satellite Meeting is similar to a SIG meeting but has logistical or financial needs that do not fit conveniently into the SIG structure. Satellite Meeting proposals will be considered along with SIG proposals. SIG delegates will not be able to attend Satellite Meeting sessions and vice versa, and handout materials will be separate as well.


In order to facilitate conference organization, these deadlines will be adhered to strictly.

Deadlines
December 1, 2009 SIG Submission Deadline
January 8, 2010 SIG Acceptance Notification
March 12, 2010 SIG Preliminary Program Due
April 23, 2010 SIG Program (preliminary) Available on Web
May 21, 2010 SIG Complete Program on Web
June 25, 2010 Handout Materials Due
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Logistical considerations

SIG meetings will be held during the two days prior to the main conference: Friday and Saturday, July 9 and July 10. On the first day, SIGs will be held in parallel with the Student Symposium; on the second day, with tutorials. Participants will register for a primary SIG but will be free to circulate between parallel sessions only on the day of the meeting(s) they are registered for.

Several SIG meetings will be held during the main meeting. A proposal may indicate a preference for when its meeting should be held; we will try to respect these preferences but do not guarantee that all SIGs will receive their preferences.

 

Responsibilities of SIG organizers and ISCB / ISMB

SIG organizers are responsible for the scientific content of the SIG meeting. They may invite speakers, publish a call for submissions, or use a combination. They are expected to operate within the context of ISMB procedures, including finalizing the program and providing materials by the deadlines, working within the budget, etc.

Delegates to all SIG meetings will receive handouts from all SIG meetings, to facilitate movement between sessions. The handouts may be on a CD, in printed form, or both; this will be decided later.

Organizers will collect and prepare handout materials. They are responsible for ensuring that the material that they submit may be legally used and that appropriate copyright permissions have been arranged. Speakers are expected to grant permission to ISMB to copy and distribute these materials, including making them available for sale.

SIG organizers should consider hosting and maintaining a SIG website.

Please pay particular attention to the deadlines for submitting the program of speakers and the handout materials (in electronic form). SIG participation is much more effective when delegates can view the schedules on the web ahead of the meeting and when they receive the handouts from all SIGs together.

ISCB will handle the logistics of holding the SIG meeting in conjunction with ISMB 2010 and will take the financial risk for holding the meeting. This includes managing registration, promoting the meeting, preparing delegate handouts from the provided materials, providing a room and audio-visual services (Internet access, projector & screen, microphones, etc.), and supplying food.

Please review the ISCB/SIG Relationship document for more detailed information.

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How to apply

Please include the following sections in your proposal, in the indicated order. The entire proposal should be no more than four pages long.

  1. Title (up to 20 words, preferably worded to pique delegates' interest)
  2. Topic: Describe the field to be covered by the SIG meeting and its relevance for conference participants (about one page)
  3. Meeting details
    1. Duration (1 or 2 days)
    2. Preference for being scheduled before or in parallel with the main meeting (indicate if it does not matter)
    3. Expected sessions / topics, if possible with an explanatory paragraph about each
    4. Draft of time schedule for the day(s) of the meeting
    5. How presentations will be selected (invitation, call for submissions, etc.)
    6. Possible speakers (This is not required, but may add weight to the proposal-indicate speakers who have already agreed to participate.)
    7. Previous meetings of this or related SIGs, with attendance statistics
    8. List of special requests not covered in the ISCB/SIG Relationship document referenced above, noting if any request is essential to conducting the meeting (ISCB will try to be accommodating but cannot guarantee to supply specially-requested items). A Satellite Meeting proposal should explain why the meeting should be held as a Satellite Meeting instead of as a SIG.
    9. Potential sources of sponsorship for the meeting
  4. Information about organizers: For each organizer, include full name (including title), affiliation, e-mail and postal addresses, telephone numbers (work and cell, if available, including country and city codes), fax number, URL of home page, qualifications to organize this meeting

Proposals should be submitted in Acrobat (.pdf) format. Name the file using the family name of the first organizer (i.e., John Doe's proposal should be in a file named doe.pdf).

Submit proposals online by Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Proposal evaluation

Proposals will be evaluated by a committee chaired by Hershel Safer, including Mike Cherry (Stanford), Joaquin Dopazo, (CIPF), Jill Mesirov (MIT/Harvard).

The following criteria will be considered:

  1. Relevance and interest of the proposed program to attendees
  2. Relevant expertise and experience of the organizers
  3. Effectiveness of the proposed SIG meeting organization
  4. Clarity, quality, and completeness of the proposal
Well-established SIGs
SIGs that have had a solid record for each of the previous three years may submit a letter of intent instead of a full proposal. The letter is due by the regular SIG proposal-submission deadline. It should indicate that the organizers plan to organize the meeting for the upcoming ISMB and should include the organizers' contact details.
A full proposal should be submitted if the organizers plan substantive changes to the previous year's proposal (e.g., focus, number of days, preference for meeting before or during the conference, special requests) or if the organizing team has changed substantially. Furthermore, a letter of intent may be used in at most two consecutive years; every third year, at least, a full proposal is required.
A solid record means that the SIG has had good, consistent or increasing attendance (taking into account problems that affect overall ISMB attendance) and has at least broken even financially in each year. It also means that the organization was carried out smoothly, including timely submission of materials according to the published schedule.
SIG organizers should contact the proposal-review committee (see contact information below) to verify their SIG's eligibility before submitting a letter of intent instead of a full proposal.

Contact information

Please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with any questions.

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