Dear Rocky '05 Participant,

Welcome to the third annual Rocky Mountain Regional Bioinformatics Meeting, a regional conference of the International Society for Computational Biology. The organizers hope that you enjoy the program, and find the meeting a productive opportunity to meet researchers, students and industrial users of bioinformatics technology in our area. We think we have the best program yet, offering a remarkable cross-section of bioinformatics research.

There is clearly a lot of computational bioscience going on in the region. Presenters at this meeting come from New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Utah, Alaska and Alberta, representing universities, industrial enterprises, government laboratories, medical libraries and even a biological field station. Two of our keynote speakers (Profs. Ben-Hur and Kechris) have just moved to the area to take new faculty positions. The meeting is a chance to get to know your local colleagues, look for collaborative opportunities, and find synergies that can drive our field forward.

We've listened carefully to the comments that were made about the previous Rocky meetings, and tried to be responsive. We've moved the meeting space to a hotel so we can stay together through the full three days, and so that transportation is less of an issue. We've retained (and expanded) the education workshop to discuss issues relevant to training the next generation of bioinformaticians. And we've arranged for small group ski lessons so that those of you who want to learn to ski will have a chance to do so among friends and colleagues. We welcome any further suggestions that you have to make next year's meeting even better.

We should all be grateful for the support of our sponsors: The International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB), IBM, Affymetrix, Apple, AMD, Dharmacon RNA Technologies, Ariadne Genomics, Cancer Informatics, PLoS Computational Biology, Exagen Diagnostics, Inc. and Wiley Publishing. The meeting would simply not be possible with organizational help from the ISCB, as well as from Kathy Thomas and Susan Trapp at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. It is only with the help of our corporate sponsors that we can make this meeting as affordable as it is. Even more important than the money is the intellectual contribution of these companies. The keynotes from Affymetrix and IBM lay out some of the challenges we face and some the resources we will need to address them. We're grateful for the valuable data and the opportunity for supercomputer time that they offer us as well.

Many of you have contributed $5 to join the Rocky Mountain Regional Bioinformatics Group, an affiliate of the ISCB. We have to charge dues of some sort in order for the ISCB to recognize us as an affiliate. So far, the only activity of the Group has been to organize this meeting. If you are interested in volunteering to get something else going, please talk to Larry Hunter.

We hope you enjoy the science, the company, and the spectacular scenery of the Rocky Mountains. Welcome!

Larry Hunter
Steve Billups
Rocky '05 co-chairs