ISCB News and Announcements

ISCB Communities of Special Interest (COSIs)
at Heart of ISMB/ECCB 2019

The ISMB/ECCB 2019 conference has been designed to make it easy for researchers sharing common interests to come together and listen to exciting new developments in their field. At the heart of the meeting are the ISCB COSIs – Communities of Special Interest -–  which reflect most of the major research themes and training in bioinformatics and computational biology.  ISMB/ECCB 2019 welcomes abstract submissions to all of these communities as well as Text Mining for Biology and Healthcare and general bioinformatics.  The 2019 featured ISMB/ECCB COSIs are listed below. To learn more about each community, click on the COSI logo.

Consider submitting your research today to be a part of this
dynamic, cannot miss conference!

Submission Deadline is April 11, 2019
CAMDA extended submission deadline is May 12, 2019

3DSIG: Structural Bioinformatics and Computational Biophysics

It is impossible to fully understand
biological systems without understanding the 3D structure of their constituting parts and their interactions. 3Dsig focuses on structural bioinformatics and computational biophysics and has become the largest meeting in this growing field.

BOSC: Bioinformatics Open Source Conference

Since 2000, BOSC has provided a forum for developers and users to interact and share research results and ideas in open source bioinformatics and open science. BOSC’s broad spectrum of topics includes practical techniques for solving bioinformatics problems; software development practices; standards and ontologies; approaches that promote open science and reproducibility; and ways to grow open source communities.

Evolution and comparative genomics are deeply intertwined with computational biology. Computational evolutionary methods, such as phylogenetic inference methods or multiple sequence alignment are widely used, yet remain far from "solved" and are indeed intense areas of research.

The MICROBIOME Community of Special Interest aims at the advancement and evaluation of computational methods in microbiome research, especially metaomic approaches. Based on the Critical Assessment of Metagenome Interpretation (CAMI), the COSI supplies users and developers with exhaustive quantitative data about the performance of methods in relevant scenarios..

RNA: Computational RNA Biology

RNA track covers the full range of research topics in the field of RNA Biology, from computational and high-throughput experimental methods development to their application in different aspects of RNA processing, structure, and function in both normal and disease conditions.

VarI: Variant Interpretation
The VarI-COSI track discusses recent advances in methodology for the annotation and analysis of genetic variants. Discussion span applications in genomics, population genetics, phylogenetics and human disease including cancer.

Bio-Ontologies

Bio-Ontologies Community of Special Interest Group (COSI) covers the latest and most innovative research in the application of ontologies and more generally the organisation, presentation and dissemination of knowledge in biomedicine and the life sciences.

CAMDA: Critical Assessment of Massive Data Analysis

CAMDA puts a spotlight on the successful analysis and integration of the massive data sets now prevalent in the life sciences. This year, the CAMDA scientific committee offers three analysis contests:

•  Metagenomic Forensics Challenge
•  Hi-Res Cancer Data Integration Challenge
•  CMap Drug Safety Challenge

Leading scientists present their best methods and analyses. Extended  papers are then published in the open access, fully indexed conference proceedings at Biology Direct.
EXTENDED ABSTRACT DEADLINE: MAY 12

Function SIG: Gene and Protein Function Annotation

The mission of the Function Community of Special Interest (Function-COSI) is to bring together computational biologists, experimental biologists, biocurators, and others who are dealing with the important problem of gene and gene product function prediction, to share ideas and create collaborations. The Function COSI features the Critical Assessment of Function Annotation, an ongoing community challenge aimed at improving methods for protein function prediction.

MLCSB: Machine Learning in Computational and Systems Biology

Systems Biology and Machine Learning meet in the MLCSB COSI. The community is the place for researchers of these areas to exchange ideas, interact and collaborate.

NetBio: Network Biology
As large scale, systems-level data are becoming increasingly available, modeling and analyzing them as networks is widespread.  Network Biology Community serves to introduce novel methods and tools, identify best practices and highlight the latest research in the growing and interdisciplinary field of network biology.

SysMod: Computational Modeling of Biological Systems

The Computational Modeling of Biological Systems

(SysMod) aims to create a forum for systems modelers and bioinformaticians to discuss common research questions and methods. The session will focus on the conjoint use of mathematical modeling and bioinformatics to understand biological systems functions and dysfunctions.

BioVis: Biological Data Visualization

The BioVis track showcases new and ongoing research in computational biology and computer science that highlight or address problems in biological data visualisation.

Submissions for talks closes 11th April

CompMS: Computational Mass Spectrometry


COSI CompMS promotes the efficient, high-quality analysis of mass spectrometry data through dissemination and training in existing approaches and coordination of new, innovative approaches.

Education: Computational Biology Education

Education-COSI focuses on bioinformatics and computational biology education and training across the life sciences with a goal to foster a mutually supportive, collaborative community in which bioscientists can share bioinformatics education and training resources and experiences, and facilitate the development of education programs, courses, curricula, etc., and teaching tools and methods.

HitSeq: High-throughput Sequencing

HiTSeq is a community of special interest devoted to the latest advances in computational techniques for the analysis of high-throughput sequencing (HTS) data. Sessions will be devoted to discussing the latest advances in computational techniques for the analysis of high-throughput sequencing (HTS) datasets and will provide a forum for in-depth presentations of the methods and discussions among the academic and industry scientists working in this field.

iRegSys: Regulatory and Systems Genomics
Regulatory genomics involves the study of the genomic control system, which determines how, when and where to activate the blueprint encoded in the genome. Regulatory genomics is the topic of much research activity worldwide. Since computational methods are important in the study of gene regulation, the RegSys COSI meeting focuses on bioinformatics for regulatory genomics.

TransMed: Translational Medical Informatics

TransMed covers the current developments in the field of clinical and translational medicine informatics.  Analysis of large amounts of multi-omics, imaging (medical and molecular), mobile sensor, clinical and health records data is paving the way for precision medicine. In the TransMed track, we will explore the current status of computational biology and advance machine learning approaches within the field of clinical and translational medicine.