Final 48 Hours of ISCB Elections

Dear ISCB Member,

Just 48 hours remain for voting in the ISCB Officers and Student Council Leaders election. You can have a voice in determining the future of ISCB by participating in these elections. The positions being voted this year are:

• ISCB Vice President, ISCB Treasurer, and ISCB Secretary
  
• Student Council Rep to the ISCB Board of Directors, Student Council Chair, Student Council Vice-Chair, Student Council Secretary, and Student Council Treasurer

Please go to www.iscb.org/elections now to read the candidate statements and cast your ballot. (Logging in to your membership account is required to verify your membership status, but your ballot is 100% anonymous.)

Voting will close on July 25th and the new leaders will be announced as soon as possible following ratification of the results by the ISCB Board of Directors and the Student Council Leaders in August.

Thank you for your participation!
The ISCB Nominations & Elections Committee

Final Call for ISCB-Asia/SCCG 2012 Papers

Final Call for Papers - NOW CLOSED
Paper submission deadline: 30 July 2012

Call for Highlights
Highlights submission deadline: 30 September 2012

Call for Posters
Posters submission deadline: 31 October 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 as a Paper or Poster, and recently published research as a Highlights. Topics areas may include, but are 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.

There are several opportunities to submit your best research, with the first deadline coming in just one week (please note that submission deadlines are firm and cannot be extended for any reasons so please submit well before the deadlines):

Original Research Paper - Submission now CLOSED

Original research papers are highly encouraged. Please submit your papers directly to the ISCB submission site at www.iscb.org/submissions/index.php?id=124. Manuscripts should be in pdf format using a minimum of 10pt font at a maximum of 10 pages, including abstract, images/figures, and references (page margins must be at least 6mm or .5 inch). 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.
 

Highlights Paper - deadline is 30 September 2012

Papers published within the last 12 months or papers that are in press are acceptable only if already available through the journal web site. Note that accepted presenters are encouraged to also discuss more recent work, however, that work will not be considered in the decision. Up to 2 papers can be submitted as one single PDF if the authors intend to present the results of multiple qualifying papers. Please submit your Highlights papers directly to the ISCB submission site at www.iscb.org/submissions/index.php?id=128.

Poster - deadline is 31 October 2012

All poster abstracts to be included in the conference program must be submitted using the conference submission site by the abstract deadline. Space for posters is limited, and while we will make every effort to accommodate all interested groups, we advise you to submit your poster well before the deadline. Please submit your poster directly to the ISCB submission site at www.iscb.org/submissions/index.php?id=129.

Some of the details in this mail differ than previous notices about submission opportunities and dates from previous notices. Please refer to these dates as the final submission dates, and note that requests to accept late submissions for any reason cannot be considered.

We look forward to receiving your submissions and welcoming you to Shenzhen in December!

Sincerely,

Victor Jin, The Ohio State University - Program Committee Chair

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

Last Call for Proposals to Organize ISCB-Asia 2013

Dear ISCB Members and Colleagues,

As a final reminder, ISCB is seeking proposals from 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. Without exception 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 (all of this information is also available as a PDF download):

• 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

ROCKY CALL FOR ABSTRACTS AND EARLY REGISTRATION ARE NOW OPEN

December 6 - 8 , 2012, Snowmass/Aspen, Colorado, USA

Dear ISCB Members and Colleagues,

Please join us for the 10th Annual Rocky Mountain Bioinformatics Conference! The Rocky conference series has grown from a small regional event into an international program with a spotlight on regional development in the computational biosciences. Invited and accepted presenters represent a broad spectrum of universities, industrial enterprises, government laboratories, and medical libraries from around the world. The meeting is a chance to get to know your colleagues near and far, seek collaborative opportunities, and find synergies that can drive our field forward.

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS: The Rocky 2012 Conference (www.iscb.org/rocky2012) provides opportunities for short flash presentations (10 minute talks) on current projects from as many attendees as possible. Original presentations (including significant works-in-progress) are solicited in all areas that involve the application of advanced computational methods to significant problems in biology or medicine.

Submitters are given the option to apply for a 10-minute "flash" oral presentation, a poster presentation, or both. We will attempt to accommodate all requests from authors accepted for presentation. The submission form is located here: www.iscb.org/rocky2012-program/rocky2012-call-for-presentations.

Submission Form Key Dates:

• Submission Deadline: October 4, 2012
• Acceptance Notification: November 2, 2012

EARLY REGISTRATION IS OPEN: Take advantage of early registration rates by visiting: www.iscb.org/rocky2012-register. Please note that accepted presenters must register as a conference attendee by November 6 in order to give a presentation at Rocky 2012.

We look forward to your participation! Please feel free to share this invitation with your colleagues and collaborators - the Rocky conference offers a special Academic Retreat package for groups attending from the same lab or school, including a free student registration.

We hope to see you there!

The Rocky 2012 Conference Organizing Team