February 18, 2021 at 01:00PM EST  Responsibilities for the Stewardship of Indigenous Data in Open Science by Stephanie Russo Carroll, University of Arizona.  Hosted by ISCB

As big data, open data, and open science advance to increase access to complex and large datasets for innovation, discovery, and decision-making, Indigenous Peoples’ rights to control and access their data within these data environments remain limited. Indigenous Data Sovereignty focuses on the protection of Indigenous rights and interests in the control and governance of Indigenous data. Indigenous data interests stretch across diverse disciplinary fields connecting community data governance ambitions with institutional and individual responsibilities in practice. Given this reach, a range of initiatives have been developed to strategically build new capabilities for strengthening control and governance of Indigenous data. These initiatives draw on a variety of methods and tactics across law, policy, ethics, and infrastructure. Applying these new tools and mechanisms in open science shifts Indigenous Peoples from invisibility within data ecosystems to vibrant contributors to open science.

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Dear Colleagues/Members,

With focus on everyone’s safety, the ISCB and ECCB leaderships have decided to move the ISMB/ECCB 2021 conference to a 100% virtual event. Capitalizing on the successes from last year and improving our platform in response to your suggestions, ISMB/ECCB 2021 will bridge time zones, enabling our global community to gather, share, network, and learn all from the comfort of your choosing.

Since its inception in 2004, the ISMB/ECCB conference alliance has become synonymous with collaboration, fostering fresh dialogue, and providing innumerable learning opportunities. Moving the conference to a virtual interface will not change what attendees have come to expect from this conference. The virtual interface will only enhance the attendee experience and ensure that more of you can enjoy it.

We invite abstracts for research that is topical to bioinformatics and computational biology, which is in progress (unpublished, formally Late-Breaking Research) or has been published after January 1, 2020 (previously Highlights Track) for consideration for oral and/or poster presentation.

Here is what to expect in the virtual environment:

• Training workshops and tutorials
• Student Council Symposium
• Live and on-demand sessions to benefit attendees from all time zones
• 500+ expected scientific talks
• Live question and answer feature to engage with the speaker during sessions
• Live chat feature to engage with other participants within your session room
• Dedicated time for research presentation within the Research Exchange Forum (formally Poster Hall)
• Ability to serendipitously make new connections when utilizing the attendee profile and match maker features
• Schedule one-on-one time with speakers, poster presenters, exhibitors, and sponsors to learn more about their work, products, or services
• Exclusive access to the ISMB/ECCB 2021 on-demand repository of talks and poster presentations for viewing at your leisure after conference dates

As you can imagine these state-of-the-art platform services do not come for free. ISCB has, however, subsidized the registration fees and retained the tiered pricing structure that was introduced last year to ensure affordable access for everyone.

The fees include full access to the online virtual platform of the conference as well as exclusive access to all of the content until Oct 31, 2021. From November 2021, the talks, with the appropriate permissions, will be available for free at ISCBtv.

If you are unable to afford the participation fee for ISMB/ECCB 2021 and hold an active ISCB membership, you can apply for a registration fellowship award that will cover the cost of the registration fees. Due to these continued unprecedented times, we will be opening up these awards to anyone who is an active ISCB member with priority going to members in low-income countries and students and postdoctoral fellows.

Though we realize nothing replaces trying to run across a convention center between sessions, ISCB is making every effort to create a virtual experience that mirrors an in-person experience with less sore feet at the end of the day. We hope that the rates above are attractive to you and that you will decide to join us.   The ISMB/ECCB 2021 call for abstracts in the COSI tracks, COVID track, general research track, and technology track is now open.  Submit your research by May 6, 2021, to be considered for oral presentation. 

Thank you for your continued support of ISCB and we look forward to “seeing” you July 26-30 for ISMB/ECCB 2021, the premier virtual event of the year!

Sincerely,

Abstracts for Oral Presentation and Posters
Deadline: March 1, 2021

Late Breaking Posters
Deadline: April 26, 2021

GLBIO 2021 welcomes submissions of Abstracts for Oral Presentation, Poster Presentation, and Late Breaking Posters.

A wide definition and inclusion of bioinformatics/computational biology will be considered, and topics of interest include the following:

• Algorithms & Machine Learning
• Bioinformatics Education
• Biostatistics
• Cheminformatics
• Clinical & Health Informatics
• Databases, Ontologies & Biocuration
• Disease Models & Molecular Medicine
• Epidemiology & Biodiversity
• Evolutionary, Comparative Genomics & Phylogenetics
• Gene Regulation & Transcriptomics
• Genome Informatics
• Image Analysis
• Macromolecular Structure & Function
• Metagenomics
• Microbiome Informatics
• Network Biology
• Proteomics & Metabolomics
• Sequence Analysis
• Synthetic Biology
• Systems Modeling
• Text Mining & Natural Language Processing
• Visualization  

February 11, 2021 -  Responsibilities for the Stewardship of Indigenous Data in Open Science by Stephanie Russo Carroll, University of Arizona.  Hosted by ISCB

As big data, open data, and open science advance to increase access to complex and large datasets for innovation, discovery, and decision-making, Indigenous Peoples’ rights to control and access their data within these data environments remain limited. Indigenous Data Sovereignty focuses on the protection of Indigenous rights and interests in the control and governance of Indigenous data. Indigenous data interests stretch across diverse disciplinary fields connecting community data governance ambitions with institutional and individual responsibilities in practice. Given this reach, a range of initiatives have been developed to strategically build new capabilities for strengthening control and governance of Indigenous data. These initiatives draw on a variety of methods and tactics across law, policy, ethics, and infrastructure. Applying these new tools and mechanisms in open science shifts Indigenous Peoples from invisibility within data ecosystems to vibrant contributors to open science.

Hosted by:

Submissions are invited for full papers, oral presentation abstracts, and posters at the 14th Great Lakes Bioinformatics Conference, an official conference of the International Society for Computational Biology. This is an invitation to scientists and professionals working in the fields of bioinformatics and computational biology to submit high quality original research papers for presentation at GLBIO 2021.

Time remains! Submit your research today.

Submission Deadline
Deadline: February 1, 2021

Submissions are invited for full papers, oral presentation abstracts, and posters at the 14th Great Lakes Bioinformatics Conference, an official conference of the International Society for Computational Biology. This is an invitation to scientists and professionals working in the fields of bioinformatics and computational biology to submit high quality original research papers for presentation at GLBIO 2021.

ISCB's Posterpalooza
When: March 10, 2021
Where: Twitter!

Providing a platform to present research and a forum to network and collaborate are two key aims of ISCB. With these aims in mind, we are piloting a new program - ISCB Posterpalooza. ISCB Posterpalooza is a 24hour event based on a Twitter take-over concept. On March 10, 2021, starting at 9 AM EST, ISCB will take over twitter by flooding the twitter-sphere with posters related to bioinformatics and computational biology using #compbiotakeover and #ISCBposterpalooza. The submitted research for the event will also be part of an online repository with video presentations. Presenting authors will be given an assigned table via ISCB virtual networking platform to discuss the poster with interested members of the community.

Are you an ISCB member? Register today for FREE!

More details and registration information

For questions about ISCB Posterpalooza please contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

January 28, 2021 SaGePhy: A Phylogenetic Simulation Framework for Gene and Subgene Evolution by Soumya Kundu, University of Connecticut.  Hosted by EvolCompGen COSI and SMBE

SaGePhy (pronounced sage-phy) is a software package for improved phylogenetic simulation of gene and subgene evolution. SaGePhy can be used to generate species trees, gene trees, and subgene or (protein) domain trees using a probabilistic birth–death process that allows for gene and subgene duplication, horizontal gene and subgene transfer, and gene and subgene loss. SaGePhy implements a range of important features not generally found in other phylogenetic simulation frameworks; these include the ability to simulate (i) subgene or domain level events inside one or more gene families, (ii) both additive and replacing horizontal gene and subgene/domain transfers, (iii) distance-biased horizontal transfers, and (iv) probabilistic sampling of species tree and gene tree nodes, respectively, for gene- and domain-family birth. SaGePhy therefore makes it possible to perform more realistic simulation of gene and subgene/domain evolution..

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Save the date for the next ISCB Webinar:

• February 11, 2021 - Responsibilities for the Stewardship of Indigenous Data in Open Science by Stephanie Russo Carroll, University of Arizona.  Hosted by ISCB
  

Final Call for Proceedings & Special Sessions

Time remains! Submit your research before it's too late.

Call for Special Sessions
Deadline: January 28, 2021

ISMB/ECCB 2021 features a Special Sessions track for emerging research areas that will run throughout the conference in parallel to other tracks (except the keynote presentations). In its structure, each session(s) provides a more in-depth look at the subject matter presented.

Submit your proposal today!

The ISCB leadership, ECCB leadership, and ISMB/ECCB 2021 Steering Committee continue to monitor the global COVID-19 pandemic, always keeping the health and safety of our membership and community at the top of our minds. At this time, we remain optimistic that we will have the opportunity to gather together in Lyon, France in July 2021. We understand that many of you may still be concerned about traveling under travel restrictions. Thus we are offering to our community the ability to attend the ISMB/ECCB 2021 conference either in person or virtually. Continue reading...