Day 2: Highlights & Recap!
Dear ISMB 2022 Participant,
As many of you have noticed our first run at a large hybrid event has been a bumpy one. ISCB knew the challenges would be many as we entered territory with a lot of unknowns. What we didn’t anticipate was the level of the challenges. To further exacerbate this, our team is down one staff member due to a positive COVID test. This means that it is taking us longer to address issues than we would like. Please know our team is hustling behind the scenes as quickly as we can to address all issues arising.
Most importantly, we want to THANK YOU for your patience, understanding, and for giving us a bit of grace, keeping kindness at the forefront. ISCB prides itself in executing excellent conferences and we know we are not meeting your standards at the moment. We promise to persevere with resilience, working tirelessly to make each day a better, less frustrating experience.
Again, thank you for your understanding,
Sincerely,
 
Christine Orengo Diane Kovats
ISCB, President ISCB, CEO
Highlights
Day two of ISMB 2022 started off with a talk from ISCB's Overton Prize keynote speaker Dr. Po-Ruh Loh, who is investigating how genetic variation affects human traits. In seeking answers to this question, Dr. Loh and his team have outlined three distinct challenges. First, they note that testing genotype-phenotype associations is statistically tricky. Second, sequencing thousands of people is an expensive undertaking. And third, most human traits don’t follow simple genetic models of inheritance. To address these challenges, the Loh lab is looking at what haplotype-informed analysis of traits might reveal about genetic inheritance and have made great strides—finding promising results—with studies on rare-coding variants, variable number tandem repeats, and copy number variants. Even with the hard work put in thus far, and the encouraging results that have accompanied his team’s work, Dr. Loh stated that there is still much more to learn. For instance, even when causal variants seem clear, the biological mechanisms responsible for them remain elusive. But the important, and exciting, takeaway to this point is that haplotype-informed analyses have given us more information into how genetic variation functions to shape human phenotypes.
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COSI Recaps:
CompMS
The CompMS COSI featured excellent presentations on computational mass spectrometry in proteomics and metabolomics. As well as nine oral presentations from selected abstracts and proceedings, there were keynote presentations by Dr. Brian Searle (OSU), who described how deep learning to predict fragment intensities and retention times powers state-of-the-art proteomics analyses, Dr. Gary Patti (WUSTL), who illuminated the source of many unknown signals in metabolomics and their implications for precision medicine, Dr. Ying Ge (UW Madison), who gave a call to action for computational experts to contribute their skills to top-down mass spectrometry, and Dr. Michael Shortreed (UW Madison), who gave a retrospective and prospective view of challenges in computational proteomics.
SysMod
The 7th annual SysMod COSI included three sessions focused on methods of modeling and their applications, modeling signal transduction, gene regulation, protein-protein interaction, and application of single-cell technology. Two keynote talks were presented by Prof. Reinhard Laubenbacher, and Prof. Ana Conesa. Bhanwar Lal Puniya announced the three poster awards winners: Carolina I Larkin, Kang Jin, and Shaimaa Bakr. Current chairman Andreas Draeger is stepping down, and a new team of organizers will be elected soon.
Bioinfo-Core
This year the Bioinfo-Core session had four talks:
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the most recent updates of JBrowse 2: an open source genome browser widely used by bioinformatics core facilities;
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an insightful presentation of the availability and challenges of training for core facility management;
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an open tech stack for the development of reproducible, portable, and robust bioinformatic pipelines developed in CWL; and
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tools for Hi-C data, specifically for connecting high-resolution 3D chromatin organization with epigenomics.
The keynote speaker was Jonathan Dursi, who is the author of the Research Computing Teams newsletter (https://www.researchcomputingteams.org/). Jonathan’s talk is available online, along a very useful list of links to resources for managers of research computing teams: https://www.researchcomputingteams.org/Bioinfo22. The keynote focused on the soft skills and people management (both in the team and expectations of collaborators). Following the keynote, there was a panel on core facility management that had the participation of Jonathan Dursi, Shannan Ho Sui (Harvard), George Bell (Whitehead Institute), Patricia Carvajal (EMBL-EBI), and Ryan Dale (NIH). The panel had a discussion about remote work, job titles and career progression as well the advice that they would have for new managers. Then we had brief discussions on options for remote and hybrid training, and the dilemma for managers to keep honing their technical skills when the job demands focus on other skills. A message to new managers was: becoming a manager means your job will change!
If you want to connect with other core facility staff and managers from around the world, please join our Slack group! Look for the #ismb channel and join the conversation, or explore all our other channels. Please visit: http://bioinfo-core.org/index.php/Main_Page for more information about our group and past workshop sessions! |
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| These talks are now available on ISMB On-Demand. |
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ISCB Town Hall:
The first full day of ISMB featured a plethora of goings on being capped off with a well attended and informative ISCB Town Hall where the newly voted on Board of Directors were announced:
Bruno Gaeta
Nomi Harris
Thomas Lengauer
Alejandra Medina-Rivera
Xuegong Zhang
Congratulations to the incoming board members!
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Tips & Tricks:
If you are a speaker or poster presenter please be sure to review details here: https://www.iscb.org/ismb2022-general/presenter-information#join
To all virtual attendees: we all need a break and caffeine fix. When a session ends, take a breather, but please remember to join a new session from the schedule!
When in doubt, always refresh!
Unable to screen share while virtually presenting? Security upgrades can prevent screen sharing for unregistered apps - try adding the web browser to the list of permitted apps.
Updates happen - for best experience, please re login to browser at the start of every day and session!
If you are unnable to connect, log out and login with a magic link (not password).
For the best virtual experience at ISMB 2022 we recommend using the latest version of Chrome (https://www.google.com/chrome/).
As a reminder masks are required for in-person attendance at ISMB 2022 as outlined at: https://www.iscb.org/ismb2022-general/health-and-safety
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Navigate ISMB 2022 Like a Pro:
If it's your first time visiting the ISMB 2022 site you can enter your email (SAME EMAIL USED TO REGISTER) to receive a magic link to log in. Once you've logged in you can update your profile and set a password for future events or continue using magic links. Attendance of the sessions during ISMB 2022 will require login. When viewing the conference platform on Chrome, the login button will be located in the upper-right hand corner. If you encounter any issues, please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Get the Conference App! You can also experience ISMB 2022 with the JUNO Live App available from Android https://play.google.com/ or Apple iO https://www.apple.com/ca/app-store/
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| Tuesday, July 12: Highlights & Reminders
7:30AM - 8:30AM: Virtual Poster Session (via Conference Platform)
8:30AM - 8:45AM: Morning Welcome & ISCB Outstanding Contributions Award Presentation to Reinhard Schneider
8:45AM - 9:45AM: Distinguished Keynote Speaker: Aïda Ouangraoua, Gene evolution at transcript level: challenges and existing solutions
9:45AM - 10:30AM: Caffeinate and Connect with exhibitors (Grand Terrace)
10:30AM - 12:30PM: Morning Sessions: TransMed COSI, HitSeq COSI, NetBio COSI, iRNA, CAMDA, VarI COSI, Education COSI, Special Track: NIH-NSF Smart Health Program, Special Session: Digital Agriculture, Technology Track
12:30PM - 2:30PM: Lunch and Ideation Hall (Poster Session A)
2:30PM - 3:30PM: Morning Sessions Continue
3:30PM - 4:00PM: Caffeinate and Connect with exhibitors
4:00PM - 6:00PM: Sessions Continue: TransMed COSI, HitSeq COSI, NetBio COSI, iRNA, CAMDA, VarI COSI, Education COSI, Special Session: Genome Privacy and Security, Special Session: Digital Agriculture, Technology Track
6:15PM - 7:15PM: Birds of a Feather (BoF):
Strategies for Team Science in the Age of Hybrid and Remote Work
Bioinformatics in the cloud for newcomers
6:15PM - 7:15PM: Virtual Poster Session (via Conference Platform)
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Thank you to our generous sponsors!
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