Links within this page: Materials | Key Dates | Submission Guidelines | Review Process
The purpose of the Tutorials program is to build knowledge and provide hands-on training in "cutting-edge" topics relevant to the bioinformatics field and the COSI communities. Tutorials offer participants an opportunity to get an introduction to important established topics in bioinformatics, to learn about new areas of bioinformatics research, or to develop advanced skills in areas about which they are already knowledgeable.
Tutorials may include any form of presentation such as brief talks or panel discussions but should include hands-on exercises. Tutorials serve an educational function and are expected to provide a balanced perspective on a field of research. They should not focus on the presenters' own research or software, unless balanced with other tools in the same realm. However, tutorials on broadly used bioinformatics tools will be considered. Please note that if you wish to focus your talk on a demo of a specific software package, your proposal should be submitted to the Technology Track.
This call is an open invitation to scientists and professionals working in the fields of bioinformatics and computational biology to submit high quality proposals for Tutorials at ISMB/ECCB 2025.
The conference organizers are able to offer a complimentary conference registration for up to 3 tutorial presenters. Tutorial organizers may choose to share the value of the complimentary registration if the tutorial has additional presenters.
Materials
The tutorial speakers agree to provide participants with teaching materials that include:
- Copies of the final slides in Powerpoint or PDF format for posting online.
- Copies of relevant articles/book chapters published by the presenters provided as Supplementary
- Information. Presenters will have to obtain copyright permission from their publishers, as required.
- Links to repositories containing training materials.
- Make your training materials FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable), as much as possible.
Key Dates
Areas
Potential topic areas (a list of Tutorials presented in 2024 is available here) may include but are not limited to the following:
- Data analysis topics:
- Single-cell
- Multiomics integration
- Spatial transciptomics
- Metagenomics
- Proteomics
- Alphafold and/or Structural biology
- any other life sciences data
- Data visualization for bioinformatics
- AI and Machine Learning for bioinformatics
- Translational informatics: Opportunities for bioinformatics in the clinical realm
- How to make your software sustainable and reusable for open access or commercial usage
- Biological sciences for bioinformaticians (eg aimed at Comp-science graduates with less/no prior biology knowledge)
- Workflow tools (eg Snakemake, NextFlow)
- Bioinformatics on cloud platforms
- Best practices (eg learning github, using pytorch, Python coding standard PEP8 etc)
Submission Guidelines
Tutorials can be planned to be either in-person or fully online, but should not be hybrid. (eg. tutorial presenters and participants should either be fully online or in-person). There is a set limit on the number of in-person tutorials but less limit on the number of selected virtual tutorials.
Tutorials presented in-person will be held on July 20, 2025. Tutorials presented online will be held on a weekday prior to the conference start. If submitting an online tutorial proposal you will be asked to confirm your preferred time zone for presentation.
Tutorials timing for full-day or half-day sessions:
In-person:
July 20, 2025 (British Summer Time - BST)
Full Day Schedule: 9:00 am - 6:00 pm, (10:45-11:00 am Coffee; Lunch Break 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm; Coffee Break at 4:00 - 4:15 pm)
Half Day Schedule: 9:00 am - 1:00 pm (Break at 10:45-11:00 am) or 2:00-6:00 pm (Break at 4:00 - 4:15 pm)
Virtual:
July 14-15, 2025 (British Summer Time - BST)
Full Day Schedule: 9:00 am - 4:00 pm (10:30-10:45am, 12-1pm, and 2:30-2:45pm)
Half Day Schedule: 9:00 am - 1:00 pm (Breaks at 10:30-10:45am and 11:45am-12:00pm) or 2:00-6:00 pm (Break at 3:30-3:45pm and 4:45 - 5:00 pm)
Tutorial proposals should contain the following information in a maximum of 4 pages:
- Title of Tutorial
- Abstract for Tutorial
- Learning Objectives for Tutorial
- Short promotional blurb for promotion if selected
- Maximum number of attendees participating
- Draft Schedule of the tutorial including coffee breaks (half-day or full-day schedule) - Include draft talk titles or draft content to be covered in each section
- Identify and highlight blocks of hands-on content in your submission
- Draft List of Tutorial Speakers with titles and affiliations
- Intended audience and level - Describe the audience for which the Tutorial is aimed, and at which level it would be taught (e.g. beginner, past experience, advanced knowledge).
The final proposal must be uploaded as a PDF file only.
During the submission process to provide a brief description of the tutorial that will be used on the website to promote it to delegates, and to confirm that if selected, you will submit draft and final tutorial materials for committee review by the listed deadlines.
Correspondence from prospective instructors should be sent to:
Review Process
All tutorial submissions will be evaluated by a committee, which will consider the following criteria:
- Relevance, interest, and value of the topic to ISMB attendees and COSI communities
- The tutorial should achieve a good balance between the theoretical component and hands-on exercises
- Completeness, clarity, and quality of the proposal and materials including schedule of tutorial
- Educational value and effectiveness of the proposed presentation approach
- Overlap with tutorials held in 2024
- Educational value and effectiveness of the proposed presentation approach and FAIRness of the data, tools and content
Successful tutorial proposals will be notified by Tuesday, January 28, 2025, (no later than 17:00 Eastern Time (ET).