Bioinformatics Curriculum Guidelines: Toward a Definition of Core Competencies

Rapid advances in the life sciences and in related information technologies necessitate the ongoing refinement of bioinformatics educational programs in order to maintain their relevance. As the discipline of bioinformatics and computational biology expands and matures, it is important to characterize the elements that contribute to the success of professionals in this field. These individuals work in a wide variety of settings, including bioinformatics core facilities, biological and medical research laboratories, software development organizations, pharmaceutical and instrument development companies, and institutions that provide education, service, and training. In response to this need, the Curriculum Task Force of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) Education Committee seeks to define curricular guidelines for those who train and educate bioinformaticians. The previous report of the task force summarized a survey that was conducted to gather input regarding the skill set needed by bioinformaticians [1]. The current article details a subsequent effort, wherein the task force broadened its perspectives by examining bioinformatics career opportunities, surveying directors of bioinformatics core facilities, and reviewing bioinformatics education programs.

Click here to read the full article. 

Hot off the E-press!

The ISCB Spring Newsletter

Click through the exciting updates within the community and learn more about ISCB's new initiatives in the 2014 Spring Newsletter.

ISMB 2014: Information for SIGs and Satellite Meetings
SIG and SM Deadlines and Information

Boston, Massachusetts
July 11 – 15, 2014

-->Special Interest Groups (SIGs):

4th Symposium on Biological Data Visualization (BioVis)
URL: www.biovis.net
Date: July 11-12, 2014

BioVis 2014 is the premier venue that brings together the visualization, bioinformatics, and biology communities to explore the application of visualization research to life science problems and to demonstrate the state of the art in the field. Highlights include

• a keynote by Tamara Munzner
• primer and challenges talks by field experts
• paper and poster presentations
• data- and redesign contests
• perfect networking opportunities
• a “bring your own problem speed-dating” session, where life scientists can bring their own problems to discuss with visualization experts

Call for Participation in the 4th Symposium on Biological Data Visualization at ISMB 2014. Papers are due March 1 and posters are due by May 24, 2014
..............................................................................................................................

The Automated Function Prediction Special Interest Group (AFP-SIG)
URL: http://biofunctionprediction.org
Date: July 11 & 12, 2014

The mission of the Automated Function Prediction Special Interest Group (AFP-SIG) is to bring together computational biologists, experimental biologists, and biocurators who are dealing with the important problem of gene and gene product function prediction, to share ideas and create collaborations.

Deadline for Submitting Abstracts: April 18, 2014
..............................................................................................................................
BioLINK SIG: Supporting Bioscience through Text Mining
URL: http://biolinksig.org/biolink-2014/
Date: Friday, July 11 (General BioLINK SIG meeting) & Saturday, July 12 (Special session, joint with BioOntologies: Phenotype Day)

We hope to attract research to this SIG meeting that directly integrates text mining into computational methods addressing biological problems, and will dedicate part of the workshop specifically to the role of text mining for automated function prediction and genetic variant interpretation.

Submissions Deadline: April 11, 2014
..............................................................................................................................
Bio-Ontologies Special Interest Group meeting
URL: www.bio-ontologies.org.uk/
Date: July 11 and July 12

The Bio-Ontologies SIG is a forum to present the most innovative research in the application of ontologies and the organisation, presentation and dissemination of knowledge in biomedicine and the life sciences.

We invite three types of submissions. Short papers (4 pages), Posters and Flash updates (1 page), deadline: April 11, 2014
..............................................................................................................................
The 15th Annual Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC 2014)
URL: www.open-bio.org/wiki/BOSC_2014
Date: July 11-12, 2014

BOSC covers the wide range of open source bioinformatics projects that have been successfully developed and adopted by the community, and encompasses the growing movement of Open Science, with its focus on transparency, reproducibility, and data provenance.

Deadline for submission of abstracts for talks: April 4 and Deadline for submission of abstracts for posters: May 15
..............................................................................................................................
HitSEQ: High Throughput Sequencing Algorithms & Applications
URL: http://hitseq.org/
Date: July 11 & 12, 2014

HiTSeq provides a forum for in depth presentations of novel algorithms, analysis methods, and applications in multiple areas of biology that HTS is transforming.

Full paper submission deadline: April 6, 2014
..............................................................................................................................
Integrative RNA Biology - SIG (IRB-SIG)
www.irbgroup.org/irb-sig-14/
Date: July 11, 2014

In this meeting we aim to bring computational experts attending ISMB together with world experts in the fields of RNA processing and non-coding RNAs to discuss recent advances in RNA biology and related computational and experimental methodology.
..............................................................................................................................
Mass Spectrometry SIG (MS-SIG)
URL: http://igenomed2.stanford.edu/BeyondProteomics_2014/
Date: July 12, 2014

MS-SIG aims to bring together experts from the global research community to discuss current progress and challenges in the field of mass spectrometry based proteomics and computational biology.

Abstract submission deadline is March 14, 2014 and May 12, 2014
..............................................................................................................................
NetBio SIG
URL: http://nrnb.org/netbiosig/
Date: July 11, 2014

The meeting will provide a unique meeting space for tool developers and users in the field of network biology. Through these complementary lenses, the meeting will bring into focus the current state of the field, its future promise and how to get there.

Submission deadline is April 22, 2014
..............................................................................................................................

New Challenges in Computational Single Cell Biology
URL: www.imsb.ethz.ch/researchgroup/mclaassen/Events/ISMB_SIG_CSCB_2014
Date: July 12, 2014

This workshop features keynotes from invited speakers, presentations selected from the submitted abstracts and poster presentations to share the latest results on single cell driven biology, cutting edge technology development and mathematical modeling approaches.

Call for abstracts. Accepted abstracts will be presented as posters. The best accepted abstracts will be invited for oral presentation.

Abstract submission Deadline is April 30, 2014

..............................................................................................................................

Regulatory Genomics Special Interest Group - RegGenSIG
URL: http://light.ece.ohio.edu/~reggen/2014/
Date: July 12, 2014

RegGenSIG is a collaborative community of scientists who convene to solve difficult research problems in all areas of computational regulatory genomics.

Submit abstracts to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Extended abstracts for oral presentation are due by April 20, 2014, and 250 word abstracts for poster presentations are due by May 18, 2014
..............................................................................................................................
VarI-SIG
URL: http://varisig.biofold.org
Date: July 12, 2014

The primary goal of the VarI-SIG is to outline and discuss the recent advances in the methodology for the annotation and analysis of genomic variation data.

Poster and Presentation Proposal deadline April 6, 2014

Satellite Meetings (SMs)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

-->Satellite Meetings (SMs)

3Dsig: Structural Bioinformatics & Computational Biophysics
URL: http://bcb.med.usherbrooke.ca/3dsig14
Date: July 11 & 12, 2014

3Dsig, a Satellite Meeting of the ISMB/ECCB conference, focused on structural bioinformatics and computational biophysics and has become the largest meeting in this growing field. This year we are celebrating our 10th meeting and highlighting the 2013 Nobel prize in Chemistry awarded to Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt & Arieh Warshel, the pioneers of the field.

Abstract submission deadline: April 30, 2014
..............................................................................................................................
CAMDA: Critical Assessment of Massive Data Analysis
URL: www.camda.info/
Date: Friday, July 11 & Saturday, July 12 2014

CAMDA presents an open-ended data analysis challenge format which focuses on big heterogeneous data sets that are increasingly produced in several fields of the life sciences.

Call for submissions deadlines: Extended Abstract Proposals: May 20, 2014, Abstract for Posters: May 25, 2014, Full papers: Aug 25, 2014
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

ISMB 2014 Registration is Now Open!
Register early and Save!

Boston, Massachusetts
July 11 – 15, 2014

Register today and join us in Boston for the world's largest annual meeting in computational biology.  In over 250 talks and 800 posters learn about the latest developments in the field, network, and help shape the future of computational biology and bioinformatics!

As the premier computational biology conference, ISMB 2014:

• convenes an interdisciplinary group of scientists dedicated to the advancement of biological discovery through computation.
• educates scholars at all stages of their career
• showcases state-of-the-art advances in the dynamic fields of computational biology and bioinformatics
• is the forum for introducing new directions and for announcing technological breakthroughs

Mark your calendars for ISMB 2014 and join us in Boston!

Featured ISMB 2014 Keynote Presenter:

Michal Linial, PhD
Director of the Sudarsky Center for Computational Biology
Department of Biological Chemistry
Institute of Life Sciences
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
website: www.ls.huji.ac.il/michall/

ISMB 2014: Highlights Submissions

ISMB 2014 Call for Posters ends Friday, March 14! 

Boston, Massachusetts
July 11 – 15, 2014

ISMB 2014 will bring together scientists from a wide range of disciplines:

• molecular biology
• biology
• medicine
• computer science
• mathematics
• statistics

Submit a poster and join your colleagues representing more than 45 countries to network and collaborate with.

Poster Chair:  Yana Bromberg, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Mark your calendars for ISMB 2014 and join us in Boston!

Featured ISMB 2014 Keynote Presenter:

2014 ISCB Fellows Keynote
Russ B. Altman, MD, PhD
Professor of Bioengineering, Genetics, and Medicine and Computer Science
Director, Biomedical Informatics Training Program
Stanford University, United States
Presentation Title: TBA
Presentation Time:  Tuesday July 15, 5:00 - 6:00
http://helix-web.stanford.edu/people/altman/

Upcoming Key Dates for ISCB Affiliated Conferences

Dear ISCB Members and Colleagues,

Don't miss your chance to network, connect and collaborate with your colleagues at these ISCB affiliated conferences!  

Registration discounts are available for ISCB members.
____________________________________________________________

Fifth RECOMB Satellite Conference on Bioinformatics Education (RECOMB-BE)

April 1, 2014
Pittsburgh, PA

The Fifth Annual RECOMB Conference on Bioinformatics Education (RECOMB-BE) will be held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, April 1, 2014. RECOMB-BE 2014 will focus on bioinformatics education for undergraduate and graduate students, with a special emphasis on students in the life sciences.

• ISCB members receive a 10% registration discount

____________________________________________________________

RECOMB 2014

April 2-5, 2014
Pittsburgh, PA

RECOMB 2014 is the eighteenth in a series of well-established scientific conferences bridging the areas of computational, mathematical, statistical and biological sciences. The conference features keynote talks by preeminent scientists in life sciences, proceeding presentations of peer-reviewed research papers in computational biology, and poster sessions on the latest research progress

•  ISCB members receive a 10% registration discount

_____________________________________________________________

Bio-IT World Conference & Expo

April 29 - May 1, 2014
Boston, MA

The 2014 Bio-IT World Conference & Expo plans to unite 2,500+ life sciences, pharmaceutical, clinical, healthcare, and IT professionals from 30+ countries. The Expo provides the perfect venue to share information and discuss enabling technologies that are driving biomedical research and the drug development process.

• Early Registration Deadline: March 14, 2014
• ISCB members receive a 10% registration discount

_____________________________________________________________

CHI's Structure-Based Drug Design

May 21-22, 2014
Boston, MA

Cambridge Healthtech Institute's Fourteenth Annual Structure-Based Drug Design event will showcase informative, high-quality case studies, innovative techniques, and strategies to move from computation to experiment, and finally, to drug. Top scientists from pharma and biotech will address how they are hitting epigenetic targets, provide updates on the newest wave of GPCRs and other membrane proteins, and discuss the latest in fragment-based drug design.

• Early Registration Deadline: April 18, 2014
•  ISCB members receive a 10% registration discount

_____________________________________________________________

4th Symposium on Biological Data Visualization (BioVis)

July 11-12, 2014
Boston, MA

The Symposium on Biological Data Visualization (BioVis) is the premier international and interdisciplinary event for all aspects of visualization in biology. The symposium brings together researchers from the visualization, bioinformatics, and biology communities with the purpose of educating, inspiring, and engaging visualization researchers in problems in biological data visualization as well as bioinformatics and biology researchers in state-of-the-art visualization research.

• Registration information available soon.

_____________________________________________________________

HiTSeq 2014 High Throughput Sequencing Algorithms & Applications

July 11-12, 2014
Boston, MA

Cambridge Healthtech Institute's Fourteenth Annual Structure-Based Drug Design event will showcase informative, high-quality case studies, innovative techniques, and strategies to move from computation to experiment, and finally, to drug. Top scientists from pharma and biotech will address how they are hitting epigenetic targets, provide updates on the newest wave of GPCRs and other membrane proteins, and discuss the latest in fragment-based drug design.

• Early Registration Deadline: June 6, 2014

_____________________________________________________________

InCoB2014 - 13th International Conference on Bioinformatics

Jul 31 - August 2, 2014
Sydney, Australia

InCoB has grown in its second decade to become one of the largest bioinformatics conferences in the Asia-Pacific region. This annual conference showcases the latest research and technologies in all areas of bioinformatics, and in recent years has been attended by practitioners from both biology fields and computing backgrounds in the Asia-Pacific region.

• Early Registration Deadline: June 1, 2014
• ISCB members receive a 10% registration discount

_____________________________________________________________

ECCB'14, the 13th European Conference on Computational Biology

September 7-10, 2014
Strasbourg, France

ECCB'14 is the key European computational biology event in 2014 gathering scientists working at the intersection of a broad range of disciplines including computer science, mathematics, biology, and medicine. New challenges are emerging today in these fields with the recent advances in low-cost ultra-fast sequencing, bio-imaging and big-data approaches. Databases and software are evolving especially rapidly. Nonetheless, new algorithms are still required to improve computing with massive biological or biomedical data. Indeed, multi-scale integrative analyses are struggling to deal with the enormous complexity of biological systems modeling and the "data deluge" that results from next-generation sequencing technologies.

• Early Registration Deadline: August 1, 2014
• ISCB members receive a 100 Euro registration discount

_____________________________________________________________

Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing (PSB) 2015

January 4-8, 2015
Koala Coast, HI

PSB 2015 will bring together top researchers from the US, the Asian Pacific nations, and around the world to exchange research results and address open issues in all aspects of computational biology. PSB is a forum for the presentation of work in databases, algorithms, interfaces, visualization, modeling, and other computational methods, as applied to biological problems, with emphasis on applications in data-rich areas of molecular biology.

• Early Registration Deadline: October 31, 2014
• ISCB members receive a 50 USD registration discount

_____________________________________________________________

We look forward to seeing you at some of these conferences and events, enjoying a member benefit discount!

ISMB 2014: Highlights Submissions

Submit your research for presentation at ISMB 2014!

Boston, Massachusetts
July 11 – 15, 2014

Call for Highlights Track - ISMB 2014

Highlights Deadline: February 28, 2014

Present your research for The Highlights Track, ranked as one of the top three events at ISMB and continues to be one of the most popular conference tracks.

A group of experts will select the papers to be presented at the meeting considering the following:

• the impact of the work on the field
• the likelihood that the work will make a good presentation
• the relevance to biomedical research

Highlights Track Chairs:
Burkhard Rost, Technical University Munich, Germany
Reinhard Schneider, University of Luxembourg

Authors will be notified of acceptance no later than Friday, April 4!

Mark your calendars for ISMB 2014 and join us in Boston!

Join your Colleagues at the Next Generation Sequencing Conference (NGS) 2014!

June 2-4, 2014  
Barcelona, Spain

The NGS Conference will aim to encompass the associated computational challenges:

• Novel algorithms, methods and pipelines
• Comparative benchmarks of methods
• Hardware developments specific to NGS
• High performance computing in NGS       
• Computation in portable NGS devices, micro- and nano-NGS devices
• Computation during data acquisition

Register Now and Save!

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS!

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• State of the art technologies, and technologies under development
• Novel software and algorithms
• Novel applications of NGS technologies in genomics and biology
• Post genome sequencing analysis, including RNA analysis, transcription factor binding sites profiling, histone modifications, nucleosome positioning, copy number variation, genotyping, RNA structure, dynamics of transcription and translation, etc.
• Research breakthroughs based on exhaustive applications of NGS.
• Clinical and translational applications
• Applications to agriculture and biotechnology
• Societal implications: forensic law, sociology research, history, etc.
• Economical impacts

Deadline: 14 March 2014

Submit your research now!

GLBIO 2014: Register Now!!

Join your colleagues at The Great Lakes Bioinformatics Conference 2014!!

May 16 - 18, 2014
Cincinnati Children's Hospital, University of Cincinnati

GLBIO 2014 will feature dynamic Keynote Speakers and Tutorial sessions led by proven industry experts.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Gary Bader, Associate Professor
The Donnelly Centre at the University of Toronto
http://baderlab.org/GaryBader



.......................................................

Tanya Y. Berger-Wolf, Associate Professor

Department of Computer Science

University of Illinois
http://compbio.cs.uic.edu/~tanya/



.......................................................

Charles Brooks, Warner-Lambert/Park-Davis
Professor of Chemistry

Professor of Biophysics
University of Michigan
http://brooks.chem.lsa.umich.edu/index.php?page=charles_l._brooks_iii&subdir=articles/group
.......................................................

Michael Hawrylcz, Investigator
Allen Institute for Brian Science
www.alleninstitute.org/about_us/staff/michael_hawrylycz.html




...................................................................................

TUTORIAL SPEAKERS

GLBIO 2014 will feature dynamic tutorial sessions led by proven industry experts on Friday, May 16.

Sorin Draghici, Wayne State University
Topic: Advanced Gene Network

Anil Jegga, Children’s Hospital Medical Center, University of Cincinnati
Topic: Advanced Gene Network

Jarek Meller, Children’s Hospital Medical Center, University of Cincinnati
Topic: An Introduction to Bioinformatics

Isaac Neuhaus, University of California at San Francisco
Topic: Visualization Web Interface - Javascript for Programmers

Larsson Omberg, Sage Bionetworks
Topic: An Introduction to Sage Synapys Platform

Inside ISCB - The Latest News & Announcements

UPCOMING CONFERENCES
	Conference on Semantics in Healthcare and Life Sciences Boston, Massachusetts, USA February 26 - 28, 2014
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
	Great Lakes Bioinformatics Conference Cincinnati, Ohio, USA May 16 - 18, 2014
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
	The NGS Conference Barcelona, Spain June 22 - 24, 2014
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
	Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology 2014 Boston, Massachusetts, USA July 11 - 15, 2014
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
	ISCB Latin America Conference on Bioinformatics Rio de Janeiro, Brazil October 22 - 24, 2014
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Become an ISCB member and SAVE!

The ISCB 2013 Annual Report!
Through the amazing work of volunteers, ISCB is able to continue to be the world's largest international society for computational biology, bringing its members a plethora of opportunities to network and present their science.  The 2013 Annual Report highlights the accomplishments of this great organization.
 
ISCB Officer and Board of Directors Nominations - Now Open!
ISCB encourages its members to submit nominations for open ISCB Officer positions, Board of Directors, and Student Council Leadership.  Nominations will be accepted for Board of Directors until April 18 and ISCB Officers and Student Council Leadership until May 30.  Self nominations will not be accepted.  Learn more at www.iscb.org/leadership-nominations-and-elections.

ISCB Name Myers and Pe'er 2014 Award Winners
ISCB announced its 201 Accomplishment by a Senior Scientist and Overton Prize award winner - Eugene (Gene) Myers and Dana Pe'er.
 
Captivating Program to be presented at CSHALS
There is still time to join us for the 7th Conference on Semantics in Healthcare and Life Sciences.  Four stellar keynote speakers, a tutorial on Enterprise and Scientific Data Sharing using Callimachus, four technology talks, and 18 paper presentations including poster viewing round out the two and half day program.
 
ISCB Student Council Continues their Article Series in PLOS Computational Biology
Beginning in August 2013, the ISCB Student Council has been writing monthly articles for the ISCB Society Pages in PLOS Computational Biology.  The most recent article, Building the Future of Bioinformatics through Student-Facilitated Conferencing, Kayisha Ramdayal, Miranda D. Stobbe, Tarun Mishra, Magali Michaut, January 30, 2014, explores the importance of conference training for students in non-pressure settings.

Great Lakes Bioinformatics Conference (GLBIO) Continues to Build a Stimulating Program
The upcoming GLBIO 2014 presents a stimulating, strong program.  With six pre-conference tutorials, a professional development session, an education panel, and talks and posters highlighting recent scientific work, this conference is a must add to your plans for 2014.  Expecting nearly 300 attendees, GLBIO is an excellent opportunity to network, collaborate, and learn!
 
ISCB Community News
The Community news feature on the ISCB website contains the latest information from the computational biology community.  Browse the page for more information about relative conference, current tools, and FASEB news.
 
Next Generation Sequencing Conference to be Held in Barcelona, Spain
The Next Generation Sequencing Conference 2014 (NGS 2014) is a dedicated meeting on cutting-edge approaches to the processing and analysis of Next Generation Sequencing data.  This Three-day conference (two-day main meeting with one day tutorial) will bring together some of the best researchers from around the world, honor the late Fred Sanger, and provide opportunities for presentation of YOUR latest research developments.  Submit your paper or poster today!