{ C O N T E N T S }
Volume 7, Issue 2

President's Letter

ISMB/ECCB 2004

Special Interest Groups

ISCB Student Council

2004 Call for Nominations

PSB 2004

RECOMB 2004

Introducing ASBCB

ISCB as Member of FASEB

Events and Opportunities of Interest

RECOMB 2004

For 2004 ISCB was very pleased to have a close working relationship with the Research in Computational Molecular Biology conference (RECOMB), a well established annual event in a dynamic field of science bridging computer science and biology. The 2004 conference was held March 28-31 at the Westin Horton Plaza hotel in San Diego, and brought together over 650 attendees from 30 countries.

This highly respected meeting always consists of keynotes from the best scientists in the field and the latest research findings presented as both oral papers and posters. One of the highlights of each RECOMB conference is a collection of keynotes by four distinguished award winners and five invited talks by researchers of highest international esteem who are asked to inform the community about landmark advances in computational and experimental research and inject new directions into the field of computational molecular biology. In 2004 those keynotes were:

• Carlos Bustamante, University of California Berkeley, winner of The Distinguished New Technologies Lecture, gave a talk entitled Recent Advances on the Manipulation of Single Biomolecules
  
• Russell Doolittle, University of California San Diego, awarded The Stanislaw Ulam Memorial Computational Biology Lecture, delivered an address on Fifty Years of Sequence Analysis: What Have We Learned?
  
• Andrew Fire, Carnegie Institution of Washington, selected for The Distinguished Biology Lecture, talked about RNAi, Genome Ultrastructure, and Other Unexpected Tales from the Analysis of Genetic Silencing
  
• Richard Karp, University of California Berkeley, recipient of the Fred Howes Distinguished Service Award, presented Algorithms for Inferring Cis-Regulatory Structures and Protein Interaction Networks
  
• William McGinnis, University of California San Diego, presented Evolutionary Change in Developmental Genetic NetworksI
  
• Deborah Nickerson, University of Washington, gave a talk on SNPing in the Human Genome
  
• Martin Nowak, Harvard University, lectured on the Somatic Evolution of Cancer
  
• Christine Orengo, University College London, presented A Structural Perspective on Genome Evolution
  
• Elizabeth Winzeler, Scripps Research Institute, gave a talk entitled Systems Biology and Malaria

In addition, 38 papers were presented, representing a 17.6% acceptance rate from among the 215 submissions received. RECOMB, like ISMB, ECCB and PSB, is grappling with relatively low acceptance rates due to the ever increasing number of submissions - a clear indication of the explosive rate of growth within our science. The conference organizers have considered the options of either parallel sessions or extending the program to include another day. Unfortunately, both of those options have their critics, and how this will be addressed in the future is yet to be determined.

The poster sessions provided an opportunity for 292 researchers to present the results of their current work, answer questions from other attendees, and gain feedback that may prove beneficial to the continuation of these evolving projects.

RECOMB'04 conference proceedings are available for purchase by contacting acmhelp@acm.org or if calling from within the US you can dial toll free 1-800-342-6626 (Order # 508041).

Next year RECOMB will be held Boston; watch the ISCB website for announcement of dates and location when available.