ISCB Newsletter 9-2

A Note from ISCB President, Michael Gribskov

This year the Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) conference travels to Brazil, and for the first time, to South America. ISMB 2006, organized by chair Goran Neshich and vice-chair Ana Vasconcelos, and program committee chairs Phil Bourne and Søren Brunak includes the best features of past ISMB conferences and adds new tracks that expand the scope of the conference. I thank everyone involved in producing this conference, including the many volunteer committee members, the hundreds of reviewers, the Brazilian-based professional conference organizers and the ISCB staff for their efforts.

Planning for conferences such as ISMB is increasingly complicated by tighter government funding. Tighter funding results in restrictions on travel and, in turn, in reduced attendance at international meetings such as ISMB, RECOMB and ECCB. ISCB is exploring improving outreach to the computational biology community by increasing local conference/meeting/workshop activities. Recent events include ISCB co-sponsorship of educational workshops in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and India. In addition, we have donated student travel fellowship funds and had a presence in the exhibition areas of BIOINFO 2005 (South Korea), PSB 2006 (Hawaii), ECCB 2005 (Spain) and RECOMB 2006 (Italy). We are providing organizational support to the organizers of the RECOMB Satellite Conferences on Systems Biology and Computational Proteomics to be held in San Diego this December, and will host the Rocky Mountain Bioinformatics Conference in December. We are in the planning stages for once again joining with ECCB to host a joint ISMB/ECCB 2007 Austria next July. In addition, the ISCB Student Council has hosted their own events, organizing Student Council Symposia at both ECCB 2005 and ISMB 2006, and the first BioMeet regional conference, which was held at the University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill in April.

As we begin our tenth year as a professional society, I see that ISCB has accomplished part of what we set out to do a decade ago, but has yet to provide the substantial, tangible, lasting benefits that I believe it should. In my tenure as president, I have continually felt we fail to harness the volunteer energies of members. And yet, the range of activities noted above gives me hope that we are getting on the right track.

At our board of directors meeting in Brazil I will be leading a discussion about how to improve the effectiveness of ISCB as an organization, using results from a recent questionnaire to build upon our strengths and reduce our weaknesses. Community contributions to ISCB and improved membership benefits are generally launched in committees; committee effectiveness is vital to our success and growth. Your current or future service on an ISCB committee will leave a lasting legacy for the benefit of members now and in the future.

Until then, see you in Brazil!
Michael Gribskov,
President, ISCB