First Call for Papers and Posters: ISCB-Asia/SCCG 2012

ISCB-Asia/SCCG 2012, co-hosted by ISCB and BGI, will be held in Shenzhen, China from December 17-19.  Confirmed keynote speakers include Gunnar von Heijne, Philip Greene, Piero Carninci, Takashi Ito, Eric Xing and Zhiping Weng.  They will be joined by several prominent invited speakers in special sessions including: computational tools for NGS, cancer informatics, and cloud and work flows for reproducible biology.  ISCB is known for hosting a variety of international meetings including ISMB, while BGI of Shenzhen is one of the world's largest sequencing centers.  Shenzhen is a booming city with easy access from adjacent Hong Kong and a pleasant climate during December.

We cordially invite you to submit original research in any area of computational biology, including, but not limited to: computational tools for NGS, cancer genome informatics, cloud and work flows for reproducible bioinformatics, protein bioinformatics, metagenomics, RNA informatics, machine learning, and open problems in computational biology.  Accepted proceedings papers will be submitted to a special issue of BMC Bioinformatics/BMC Genomics or recommended for publication in Omics, or Gigascience.  Submission of relevant review or trends in technology papers is also encouraged and will be considered for publication in a special issue of Briefings in Bioinformatics.

Manuscripts should be in PDF format at a maximum of 10 pages, including abstract, images/figures, and references.  The submission deadline is July 30th.

Poster abstracts in the same topic areas are also invited. A poster abstract should be no more than 500 words, and submitted as a one-page PDF file by September 17th

In all cases, submissions should be sent via email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Please see http://iscb.org/iscb-asia2012 for more details on the conference and paper submission process.

We look forward to receiving your submissions,

Victor Jin, The Ohio State University - Program Committee Chair

Paul Horton, AIST Japan - Conference Chair and Program Committee Co-Chair


 

Reminder Call for ISCB Officer Nominations

Officer Nominations Deadline: June 3, 2012 

Also in progress: Student Council Leader Nominations - deadline June 3, 2012  

As a reminder, the International Society for Computational Biology is encouraging members to submit nominations for the Society's Officer positions of Vice President, Treasurer, and Secretary; and the Student Council Leadership positions of Chair, Vice-Chair, Secretary, Treasurer, and SC Rep to the ISCB Board. Nominations are submitted at www.iscb.org/nominate (you must login to your membership record to access the nomination form). In all cases, self nominations will not be accepted.

If you know of excellent candidates that meet the eligibility requirements below, please be sure to submit your nomination(s) right away.

• In order to be eligible to be an Officer candidate a person must have served on the ISCB Board of Directors for at least one year prior to January 2013, and be an ISCB member in good standing, or renew a lapsed membership no later than June 24, 2012.
  
• All Officer candidates must pledge to make every reasonable effort to attend the weekly Executive Committee teleconferences beginning with a training period by mid-October, 2012, the bi-monthly Board teleconferences beginning with a training period in October 2012, and the annual in-person Board of Directors meeting (held at the ISMB conference) at their own expense through completion of the two-year Officer term that begins January 21, 2013.
  
• The elected Officers will also serve concurrently on the Board of Directors for a term that ends January 21, 2016.

Nominations for Officers and Student Council Leaders will be accepted through June 3, 2012. Election of the Officers and Student Council Leaders will take place via online voting by the membership in July, 2012, including availability to a dedicated voting booth at the ISMB conference.

Each nomination requires the name, affiliation, and email address of the nominee, along with an assurance that the nominee meets the qualifications and is willing to stand for election for the position in question. The nomination must also include a few sentences of justification that makes the strongest case possible for the nominee.

Full information regarding the 2012 nominations/elections timeline, call for nominations, and Director and Officer responsibilities can be found at www.iscb.org/iscb-leadership-a-staff-/officers-and-board-directors/nomination-election-procedures.

We are looking forward to an active participation by the ISCB membership in the nominations and election process, and we thank you in advance for your qualified nominations.

Respectfully,

Dietlind Gerloff, Scott Markel, and Anna Tramontano
Co-Chairs, ISCB Nominations Committee

Call for Proposals to Organize ISCB-Asia 2013

>>Click here to download a PDF version of this CFP.

Dear ISCB Members and Colleagues,

ISCB is pleased to announce this Call for Proposals for individuals or groups interested in hosting the next open ISCB-Asia conference, slated for the third quarter of 2013, to co-organize this meeting with ISCB anywhere in the Asia region. The proposal deadline is the 1st of August, 2012. If you are not personally interested but know of someone else who could do an excellent job of organizing this event, please feel free to forward this mail. An overview of ISCB, its expansion into regionally-based international meetings, and the details of the proposal requirements are all specified below.

ISCB-Asia 2013 Meeting

The aim of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) is to serve the worldwide computational biology community by addressing scientific policies, providing access to high quality publications, organising meetings, and serving as a portal to information about training, education, employment and news from related fields. ISCB currently has over 3000 members from more than 70 countries around the world. Among its many activities ISCB hosts annual meetings, including ISMB, the world's longest running and largest international bioinformatics conference (held jointly with ECCB every other year in Europe), as well as a series of smaller, newer meetings. ISCB also has affiliations in place with several other significant meetings in the field, such as PSB and RECOMB.

In an extension to its meeting activities, ISCB is participating in the organization of regional meetings in locations where ISMB has not been held. In 2009 and 2011 joint ISCB-Africa meetings were held in collaboration with the African Society for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (ASBCB), and the 2013 meeting is now being planned for Tunis, Tunisia; in 2010 and 2012 ISCB-Latin America was held in Uruguay and Chile, respectively; the first ISCB-Asia was held jointly with InCoB 2011 in Malaysia, and the 2012 meeting is now being planned for China (Shenzhen). With the aim of continuing these successful regional meetings, ISCB is now soliciting applications for the co-organization of our next meeting in Asia for 2013.

A requirement that ISCB-Asia become permanently affiliated to an existing meeting or society is not intended. Having co-organised the ISCB-Asia meeting with the Asia-Pacific Bioinformatics Network in 2011 and with BGI in 2012, ISCB now looks to continue expanding its network of affiliations by seeking proposals from other existing societies or conferences in the Asia region, or by working with a group that has a similar interest in organising a new bioinformatics community meeting in Asia.

Preliminary proposals should provide:

• Names and short CVs of local organising committee members and their proposed roles
• Evidence of previous experience in organising mid- to large-sized meetings
• Planned meeting dates and location
• Budget proposal including basic costs (venue rental, speaker travel, etc.) and preliminary commitments for financial support from sponsors.
• Estimated meeting size
• Focus of scientific program (required if a focus on a specialist research topic is planned)
• Plans for publishing or online dissemination of the proceedings
• Evidence of co-operation among multiple groups within the Asian region

ISCB will:

• Participate through elected ISCB scientific representatives on the organising committee
• Endorse and advertise the meeting through its extensive mailing lists
• Suggest keynote speakers
• Potentially provide funds to seed the meeting (funds repayable to ISCB from conference proceeds)
• Provide budget guidance
• Potentially provide travel funds to support student participation

Criteria for evaluation

• Proposals that emphasize and encourage attendance from a diverse range of regional groups and attendees will have an advantage
• The meeting should be in a place where there is expected to be a sizeable local community from which attendance can be expected, as well as reasonable international access to a nearby airport
• Budget is within the range which can be covered by reasonably estimated registration fees alone, in the event that sponsor funding does not materialize
• Preference will be given to organising committees with diverse representation
• Proposers should have experience with organising meetings

Proposals should be submitted via email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by 1 August 2012.

Thank you,
Paul Horton, Chair, ISCB Conferences Committee
Janet Kelso, Co-Chair, ISCB Conferences Committee

Final Call for ISCB Fellows Nominations: deadline April 30th

Dear ISCB Member,

The nominations period for the 2012 ISCB Class of Fellows is closing very soon. Our field is rich with accomplished researchers, and if you know of an ISCB member that has earned his or her place among ISCB's Fellows through exceptional and exemplary contributions to the field of computational biology/bioinformatics, please nominate him or her without further delay.

Information about the ISCB Fellows program, nomination requirements, selection criteria, and the names and affiliations of all current Fellows can be found at www.iscb.org/iscb-fellows

The nomination form is available at www.iscb.org/fellow-nomination (as only members can nominate, login is required; if you are not a current member please join today!).

The nomination deadline is just days away. Don't let this opportunity to help determine the next class of Fellows slip away.

Thank you for your considerate nomination!

Sincerely,
Alfonso Valencia, Chair, ISCB Fellows Committee

ISMB 2012 Last Call for Late Posters and Tech Track

Dear ISCB Members and Colleagues,

These final two opportunities are coming to a close for the possibility of presenting your work at the ISMB 2012 conference in July in Long Beach, California:

Technology Track - deadline April 20th

Late Posters - deadline April 20th

The Technology Track provides organizations the opportunity to showcase their software and/or hardware relevant to the bioinformatics/molecular biology community. Submissions selected for presentation are required to pay a Tech Track fee and will be given a 25- or 50-minute time slot based on their status as a non- or for-profit organization.

Late Posters will be displayed and scheduled for presentation within the regular poster sessions of the conference. All posters are intended to convey a scientific result in any area of computational biology, and must include original work that is unpublished or published after August 1, 2011. While purely experimental work is especially encouraged, advertisements for commercial software packages are prohibited.

The ISMB 2012 conference agenda is taking shape, and you can visit the Schedule Overview in order to begin organizing your travel plans. The Program page of the site includes links to details about the conference tracks and sessions, and is being updated regularly as decisions are made on acceptances from submissions to the various tracks. And finally, the General Info page includes links to helpful information such as housing, tourist info, and the availability of child/dependent care to ensure your conference experience is both successful and enjoyable.

We encourage you to register now for this 20th Anniversary ISMB conference being held July 15-17, 2012, in Long Beach, California. The link below will take you to a page full of details, including options, pricing, and early registration discount deadline, as well as to the online registration form itself.

ISMB 2012 Registration

Help spread the word by tweeting about your participation using #ismb. You are also invited to be among the first to follow us @ISMBinfo where we will begin posting news and updates soon.

The ISMB 2012 Conference Co-Chairs and every member of the Scientific Organizing Committee look forward to welcoming you to Long Beach soon!

Sincerely,

ISMB 2012 Conference Co-Chairs:
Terry Gaasterland, University of California, San Diego, United States
Richard Lathrop, University of California, Irvine, United States
Burkhard Rost, Technical University Munich, Germany

GLBIO 2012 Early Registration Deadline

Dear ISCB Members, Colleagues, and Past GLBIO Attendees,

We encourage you to take advantage of discounted registration pricing while it lasts for the The Great Lakes Bioinformatics Conference, taking place May 15-17 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Online Registration Information and Form Early Registration Deadline: April 14, 2012

With submitted oral and poster presentations recently decided and planned for posting to the conference website soon, this year's event is developing into a very robust meeting. Topic areas include Algorithm Development and Machine Learning, Bioimaging, Databases and Ontologies, Disease Models and Epidemiology, Evolution and Comparative Genomics, Gene Regulation and Transcriptomics, Metagenomics, Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics, Population Genomics, Protein Interactions and Molecular Networks, Protein Structure and Function, Sequence Analysis, and Text Mining.

Nearly 30 (yes, 30!) corporations and universities within the Great Lakes region have signed on as conference sponsors, which is sure to contribute to a diverse exhibition and exceptional exchange of opportunities and collaborations for all attendees.

Be sure to register today and we will look forward to welcoming you to Ann Arbor in May!

Sincerely,

Brian Athey (University of Michigan) and Robert Murphy (Carnegie Mellon University), GLBIO 2012 Honorary Con
GLBIO 2012 Conference Chairs
and all members of the GLBIO 2012 Steering Committee and Program Committee

Reminder Call for ISCB Fellows Nominations: deadline April 30th

 Dear ISCB Member,

As a reminder, nominations for the 2012 ISCB Class of Fellows is now open. If you know of a member that you believe has earned his or her place among ISCB's Fellows through exceptional and exemplary contributions to the field of computational biology/bioinformatics, please nominate today. Since 2009 the leadership of the International Society for Computational Biology has been honoring our most distinctive members as Fellows, and this is your chance to name our 2012 Class of Fellows.

Information about the ISCB Fellows program, nomination requirements, and selection criteria can be found at www.iscb.org/iscb-fellows

The nomination form is available at www.iscb.org/fellow-nomination (as only members can nominate, login is required; if you are not a current member please renew today!).

The nomination deadline is April 30, 2012.

Thank you for your considerate nomination!

Sincerely,

Alfonso Valencia, Chair, ISCB Fellows Committee

Last Call for ISCB Board of Directors Nominations

Board Nominations Deadline: April 6, 2012

Also in progress: ISCB Officer and Student Council Leader Nominations - deadline June 3, 2012

As a reminder, the International Society for Computational Biology is encouraging members to submit nominations for the Society's Board of Directors; the Officer positions of Vice President, Treasurer, and Secretary; and the Student Council Leadership positions of Chair, Vice-Chair, Secretary, Treasurer, and SC Rep to the ISCB Board. Nominations are submitted at www.iscb.org/nominate (you must login to your membership record to access the nomination form). In all cases, self nominations will not be accepted.

If you know of excellent candidates that meet the eligibility requirements below, please be sure to submit your nomination(s) right away.

• In order to be eligible for candidacy as a Director a person must be or become an ISCB member in good standing no later than the date he or she accepts the nomination. Acceptance is then completed by submitting a candidate statement by May 4, 2012.
• All Director candidates must pledge to make every reasonable effort to attend the bi-monthly Board teleconference beginning with a training period in October 2012 and the annual in-person Board of Directors meeting (held at the ISMB conference) at their own expense through completion of the three-year term that begins January 21, 2013.
• In order to be eligible to be an Officer candidate a person must have served on the ISCB Board of Directors for at least one year prior to January 2013, and be an ISCB member in good standing, or renew a lapsed membership no later than June 24, 2012.
• All Officer candidates must pledge to make every reasonable effort to attend the weekly Executive Committee teleconferences beginning with a training period by mid-October, 2012, the bi-monthly Board teleconferences beginning with a training period in October 2012, and the annual in-person Board of Directors meeting (held at the ISMB conference) at their own expense through completion of the two-year Officer term that begins January 21, 2013.
• The elected Officers will also serve concurrently on the Board of Directors for a term that ends January 21, 2016.
  

Nominations for Board of Directors will be accepted through April 6, 2012. Election of Board members will take place during the annual ISCB Board of Directors meeting in July 2012.

Nominations for Officers and Student Council Leaders will be accepted through June 3, 2012. Election of the Officers and Student Council Leaders will take place via online voting by the membership in July, 2012, including availability to a dedicated voting booth at the ISMB conference.

Each nomination requires the name, affiliation, and email address of the nominee, along with an assurance that the nominee meets the qualifications and is willing to stand for election for the position in question. The nomination must also include a few sentences of justification that makes the strongest case possible for the nominee.

Full information regarding the 2012 nominations/elections timeline, call for nominations, and Director and Officer responsibilities can be found at www.iscb.org/iscb-leadership-a-staff-/officers-and-board-directors/nomination-election-procedures.

We are looking forward to an active participation by the ISCB membership in the nominations and election process, and we thank you in advance for your qualified nominations.

Respectfully,

Dietlind Gerloff, Scott Markel, and Anna Tramontano
Co-Chairs, ISCB Nominations Committee

ISMB 2012 Registration Now Open and Last call for SCS8 Abstracts

Dear ISCB Members and Colleagues,

We invite you to register now for the 20th Anniversary ISMB conference being held July 15-17, 2012, in Long Beach, California. The link below will take you to a page full of details, including options, pricing, and early registration discount deadline, as well as to the online registration form itself.

ISMB 2012 Registration

Additionally, these final opportunities still exist for the possibility of presenting your work at the conference:

Student Council Symposium - deadline April 2nd

Technology Track - deadline April 20th

Late Posters - deadline April 20th

The 8th annual Student Council Symposium is a student-organized event featuring keynote lectures, oral presentations and a poster session tailored to undergraduate and graduate students as well as post-docs in computational biology and related disciplines. SCS presenters are eligible to apply for special Travel Fellowship funding secured and awarded by the Student Council.

The Technology Track provides organizations the opportunity to showcase their software and/or hardware relevant to the bioinformatics/molecular biology community. Submissions selected for presentation are required to pay a Tech Track fee and will be given a 25- or 50-minute time slot based on their status as a non- or for-profit organization.

Late Posters will be displayed and scheduled for presentation within the regular poster sessions of the conference. All posters are intended to convey a scientific result in any area of computational biology, and must include original work that is unpublished or published after August 1, 2011. While purely experimental work is especially encouraged, advertisements for commercial software packages are prohibited.

The ISMB 2012 conference agenda is currently taking shape, and you can visit the Schedule Overview in order to begin organizing your travel plans. The Program page of the site includes links to details about the conference tracks and sessions, and is being updated regularly as decisions are made on acceptances from submissions to the various tracks. And finally, the General Info page includes links to helpful information such as housing, tourist info, and the availability of child/dependent care to ensure your conference experience is both successful and enjoyable.

The ISMB 2012 Conference Co-Chairs and every member of the Scientific Organizing Committee look forward to welcoming you to Long Beach soon!

Sincerely,

ISMB 2012 Conference Co-Chairs:
Terry Gaasterland, University of California, San Diego, United States
Richard Lathrop, University of California, Irvine, United States
Burkhard Rost, Technical University Munich, Germany

ISCB Education Committee Seeks Input on Identifying a Consensus Bioinformatics Curriculum

Dear ISCB Members and Colleagues,

The ISCB Education Committee began working on a number of activities last fall related to developing recommendations for a bioinformatics curriculum. We have 3 subcommittees that are described below. A recap of this initiative can be found in the email included at the bottom of this message (dated September 14, 2011).

After completing an initial survey of the Education committee, we have drafted a manuscript that we would like to share with you. The manuscript is available on the blog mentioned below. We are interested in getting your comments on this draft. While we are soliciting feedback, we will continue to analyze the information we are collecting in our subcommittees and hope to incorporate this information in an updated document. We would be happy to have you join in this effort.

A blog has been set up to gather input: http://bioinfocurriculum.blogspot.com/. Login is not required.

We are particularly interested in hearing from you about:
1) ideas for publicizing these efforts and involving a broader cross-section of the computational biology community
2) the draft curriculum (a link to the document is provided on the blog page)
3) the plans to refine the curriculum (see the final paragraph of document)

To post your comments, you can click on the 'comment' link at the bottom of the blog. Please provide your comments by March 30th, 2012.

We are looking ahead to Long Beach and are organizing a Birds of a Feather (BoF) at ISMB 2012 to discuss bioinformatics curriculum guidelines (http://www.iscb.org/ismb2012-program/birds-of-a-feather). Perhaps you can join us in Long Beach to continue this discussion.

Thanks for your interest in this effort. We value your input.

Sincerely,
Fran Lewitter, Lonnie Welch and Russell Schwartz


SUBCOMMITTEE 1 (job opportunities):
Leader: Lonnie Welch
Members: Murlidharan Nair, Steve Jennings
Recent activity: review job postings on ISCB web site for skills required

SUBCOMMITTEE 2 (existing curricula):
Leader: Russell Schwartz
Members: Erik Bongcam-Rudloff, Celia van Gelder, Antoine H.C. van Kampen, Scott J. Emrich, Murlidharan Nair, Shifra Ben-Dor, Erich Baker
Recent Activity: review existing curricula at for Bioinformatics degree granting programs

SUBCOMMITTEE 3 (core facilities):
Leader: Fran Lewitter
Members: Erik Bongcam-Rudloff, Scott J. Emrich, Shifra Ben-Dor, Lakshmanan Iyer, Erich Baker, Winston Hide, Takis Benos
Recent Activity: survey bioinformatics core facility directors to regarding hiring practices

=======================
From: Welch, Lonnie
Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2011 10:56 PM
To: 'Fran Lewitter'; education
Subject: RE: ISCB Education Committee initiatives and minutes from 7/17/11 meeting

Dear Members of the ISCB Education Committee,

I would like to invite your participation in our committee's task force on curriculum.

During spring and summer of 2011, we constructed a straw man curriculum that is based on a survey of our committee and of the EMBnet community. The result of this effort is being written up in a report for the ISCB column in PLoS Computational Biology.

We plan to refine the curriculum via the following tasks:
1. Survey job opportunities (led by Lonnie Welch)
2. Survey existing curricula (led by Russell Schwartz)
3. Survey perspectives of Directors of Bioinformatics Core Facilities and biological researchers (led by Fran Lewitter)

We plan to perform the surveys during fall 2011 and to incorporate our findings into the EduComm bioinformatics curriculum during winter 2012.

Please let us know if you would like to be involved in this effort. In your reply, specify which of the 3 tasks interest you (feel free to select as many of the 3 as you wish).

Best regards,
Lonnie Welch
--
Lonnie R. Welch, Stuckey Professor
Director of the Bioinformatics Laboratory
School of Elec. Eng. & Computer Science,
Biomedical Engineering Program,
Molecular and Cellular Biology Program
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
740-593-1575 (office); 740-818-9521 (mobile)
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
www.ohio.edu/cidds/welch/