Leading Professional Society for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
Connecting, Training, Empowering, Worldwide
Leading Professional Society for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
Connecting, Training, Empowering, Worldwide
#ISMB #KN1 Michal Linial opened the meeting with a keynote talk entitled “Good Things Come in Small Packages - Replicators and Innovators”
Linial spoke on her research group’s ‘treasure hunt for hidden functions’ driven by the guiding principles to listen to the ‘big data’ and be aware of outliers, although don’t forget the biology because the outliers may be the interesting elements.
She spent time talking about short peptides as unexplored mode of regulation, including a clan of short peptides, non-toxic TOLIPs (toxin-like proteins), which are found at at the origin of Metazoa and have been duplicated and modified throughout evolution.
#ISMB #KN2 Gene Myers gave his ISCB Senior Scientist Accomplishment Award talk entitled “DNA Assembly: Past, Present, and Future” and chronicled the history of sequence assembly methods, starting with the “original shotgun sequencing project” on lambda phage by Fred Sanger.
He talked about the whole genome assembly approach (in a nutshell) he and his team used at Celera. All the unique sequences were identified with very low error rates and could be linked together using mate pairs to build scaffolds and assemble a complete genome.
He ended with his perspective of how demand for lower cost sequencing “after the genome” has hampered progress on the production of high quality de novo genome reconstructions. He talked about his renewed interest in assembly using next gen long-read sequencers, which is chronicled regularly in the Dazzler Blog.
#ISMB #SS01 series of talks on human microbiome studies attracted great interest as well as the launch if the Communities of Special Interest (#COSI), which were discussed in #ISMB #SS02.
The jam-packed day was capped with a full house of football fans at the World Cup viewing area in the exhibit hall, complete with ISMB-themed espresso drinks.
The ISMB delegates are now gearing up for another science packed day!
ISMB 2014 came to a close on Tuesday, July 15, with a standing ovation for ISCB president, Burkhard Rost. Over 1,300 scientists came to Boston to network, learn, and collaborate. With another successful meeting in the books, ISCB looks forward to planning ISMB/ECCB 2015.
CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS
ISMB 2014, Day 1: July 13
#ISMB #KN1 Michal Linial opened the meeting with a keynote talk entitled “Good Things Come in Small Packages - Replicators and Innovators”
Linial spoke on her research group’s ‘treasure hunt for hidden functions’ driven by the guiding principles to listen to the ‘big data’ and be aware of outliers, although don’t forget the biology because the outliers may be the interesting elements.
She spent time talking about short peptides as unexplored mode of regulation, including a clan of short peptides, non-toxic TOLIPs (toxin-like proteins), which are found at at the origin of Metazoa and have been duplicated and modified throughout evolution.
#ISMB #KN2 Gene Myers gave his ISCB Senior Scientist Accomplisment Award talk entitled “DNA Assembly: Past, Present, and Future” and chronicled the history of sequence assembly methods, starting with the “original shotgun sequencing project” on lambda phage by Fred Sanger.
He talked about the whole genome assembly approach (in a nutshell) he and his team used at Celera. All the unique sequences were identified with very low error rates and could be linked together using mate pairs to build scaffolds and assemble a complete genome.
He ended with his perspective of how demand for lower cost sequencing “after the genome” has hampered progress on the production of high quality de novo genome reconstructions. He talked about his renewed interest in assembly using next gen long-read sequencers, which is chronicled regularly in the Dazzler Blog.
#ISMB #SS01 series of talks on human microbiome studies attracted great interest as well as the launch if the Communities of Special Interest (#COSI), which were discussed in #ISMB #SS02.
The jam-packed day was capped with a full house of football fans at the World Cup viewing area in the exhibit hall, complete with ISMB-themed espresso drinks.
ISMB 2014, Day 2: July 14
#ISMB #KN3 Isaac (Zak) Kohane gave a talk entitled “Biomedical Quants of the Word Unite! We Only Have Our Disease Burden to Lose!” during which he urged the computational biology community to get involved and do something useful to improve health outcomes. He spoke on the challenges facing e-health records, healthcare data, and getting bioinformatics in the clinic.
#ISMB #KN4 Overton Prize winner Dana Pe’er spoke on “A Multidimensional Single Cell Approach to Understand Cellular Behavior” otherwise known as "Dimensionality in Biological Data: the Power of Single Cells" in her keynote talk. She discussed how she studies biological networks in single cells using mass cytometry, which she considers a major game changer in the field. She showed how this approach could differentiate cancer cell populations from healthy populations in novel and robust ways.
ISCB held its annual open business meeting on day 2. Members of the Board spoke about the many flourishing aspects of the society, including its membership (~3000 members), meetings (8 ISCB-sponsored meetings), and other member-driven initiates. Phil Bourne, newly appointed Associate Director for Data Science at NIH and Past-President of ISCB, did a Q & A with this standing room-only audience about NIH’s new data science initiatives.
Another hot spot on Day 2 was the ISMB education workshop (#ISMB #WK06; WEB 2014), which included talks on running MOOCs, bioinformatics curricula, and gamification of bioinformatics.
ISMB 2014, Day 3: July 15
#ISMB #KN5 Robert Langer gave a keynote talk entitled “Biomaterials & Biotechnology: From the discovery of the first angiogenesis inhibitors to the development of controlled drug delivery systems and the foundation of tissue engineering.” He spoke about the many hurdles he faced while developing the first angiogenesis inhibitors and controlled release drugs, and he finished his talk highlighting his new work on “growing” livers, cartilage, and spinal implants.
#ISMB #KN6 Russ Altman delivered the ISCB Fellows keynote talk entitled “Informatics for Understanding Drug Response at All Scales.” He discussed his work on studying drug responses at multiple scales, including molecular, organism, and population responses. He concluded that informatics can be good for inferring and ranking side effects, characterizing gene-drug interactions through text mining, predicting gene expression based on a drug’s chemical structure, and using 3D protein structures to predict fragment binding.
The digital publishing workshop (#ISMB #WK06) generated a lot of interest and included talks about alternative models of peer review, FAIR data publishing (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Re-usable), and code review.
ISMB 2014 will be remembered for its fantastic and diverse keynote talks, vibrant SIGs and workshops, and the creative and stimulating atmosphere created by all its delegates. See you in Dublin next year!
| Conference Updates | |
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Original Research Submission Deadline: July 31! Submit your research for presentation at the Latin America X-Meeting on Bioinformatics with BSB and SoiBio (ISCB-Latin America)! Belo Horizonte, Brazil October 28 - 30, 2014 |
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Full-length Papers Submission Deadline: July 25! San Diego, California, USA November 10 - 14, 2014 |
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Poster Submission Deadline: July 25! Tokyo, Japan December 15 - 17, 2014 |
| ISMB 2014 Recap | |
| ISCB Celebrates Outstanding Science and Innovation at ISMB 2014 ISMB 2014 came to a close on Tuesday, July 15, with a standing ovation for ISCB president, Burkhard Rost. Over 1,300 scientists came to Boston to network, learn, and collaborate. With another successful meeting on the books, ISCB looks forward to planning ISMB/ECCB 2015. - Read ISMB Conference Highlights - |
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| Phil Bourne - Ten Simple Rules | |
| Ten Simple Rules for Approaching a New Job At some point in your professional career, you will be faced with a job interview. This may range from visiting a graduate school where you already have a placement should you want it, to interviewing for a very high-profile position in industry, government, or academia where there is significant competition for that job. Thinking both as a job applicant and a job interviewer about how I have approached job situations over the years before, during, and after the interview and how those situations have turned out, Phil Bourne can offer the following ten simple rules as you prepare. |
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During the ISMB conference in July, we announced the winners of this year’s Wikipedia Competition. ISCB conducted an international competition to improve the coverage of the Wikipedia on any aspect of computational biology. A key component of the ISCB's mission is to further the scientific understanding of living systems through computation and to communicate this knowledge to the public at large.
Wikipedia has become an important way to communicate all types of science to the public. The ISCB aims to further its mission by increasing the quality of Wikipedia articles on computational biology, and by improving accessibility to this information. The competition was open to students and trainees at any level either as individuals or as groups. We received 60 entries to the 2014 competition.
Congratulations to the following winners:
First Place - Point Accepted Mutation
By: Matthew Zygorodimos and Chris Garnham, University of Melbourne
Second Place - Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology
By: Alastair Kilpatrick, University of Edinburgh
Third Place - SNV Calling from NGS Data
By: Andrew Bennett & Aparna Elangovan , University of Melbourne
Thank you to all the participants! ISCB will be announcing the 2015 competition soon. Watch for details!
| Conference Updates | ||
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Register Now for ISCB-LA & Save! Belo Horizonte, Brazil October 28 - 30, 2014 |
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Abstract Submission Deadline: September 12! San Diego, California, USA November 9 - 14, 2014
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Mark your Calendars for ROCKY 2014! Aspen/Snowmass, Colorado December 11 - 13, 2014 |
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Registration Open for GIW ISCB-Asia 2014! Tokyo, Japan December 15 - 17, 2014 |
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Submissions are Now Open for ISCB-Africa ASBCB Bioinformatics Conference 2015! Dar es Salaam, Tanzania March 09 - 11, 2015 |
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| ISMB 2014 Recorded Talks | ||
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ISMB 2014 Conference Talks Now Available The full listing of ISMB 2014 conference presentations currently available on the website. To view the presentations you have to either be a member of the ISCB and need to be logged into your user account or have attendeed the ISMB 2014 conference. |
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| FASEB Bioart Competition | ||
| BioArt: Scientific Image & Video Competition The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) is pleased to announce its third annual BioArt competition. Each day, scientific investigators product thousands of images and videos as part of their research, but very few are ever seen outside the laboratory. We are looking for visually compelling, high resolution submissions from federally-funded researchers and/or FASEB constituent society members. Images & videos can be submitted through August 30! For more information, please visit: www.faseb.org/bioart. |
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| 2014 Wikipedia Competition | ||
| ISCB Congratulates 2014 Wikipedia Competition Winners At During the ISMB conference in July, we announced the winners of this year's Wikipedia Competition. ISCB conducted an international competition to improve the coverage of the Wikipedia on any aspect of computational Biology. A key component of the ISCB's mission is to further the scientific understanding of living systems through computation and to communicate this knowledge to the public at large. |
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| Soft Skills | ||
| Soft Skills: An important Asset Acquired from Organizing Regional Student Group Activities Contributing to a student organization, such as the International Society for Computational Biology Student Council (ISCB-SC) and its Regional Student Group (RSG) program, takes time and energy. Both are scarce commodities, especially when you are trying to find your place in the world of computational biology as a graduate student. It comes as no surprise that organizing ISCB-SC-related activities sometimes interferes with day-to-day research and shakes up your priority list. However, we unanimously agree that the rewards, both in the short as well as the long term, make the time spent on these extracurricular activities more than worth it. in this article, we will explain what makes this so worthwhile: soft skills. |
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| ISCB's Facebook Page | ||
Be sure to Like ISCB on Facebook! |
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| ISMB 2014 Conference Survey | ||