Message from the ISCB: ISMB/ECCB Rebooted: 2015 Brings Major Update to the Conference Program

The 23rd Annual International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology and the 14th European Conference on Computational Biology (ISMB/ECCB 2015) is shaping up to be a phenomenal meeting with world-renowned keynote speakers and changes in the conference format that aim to make for a more streamlined and user-friendly conference. The joint ISMB/ECCB conference is held biennially and is the flagship meeting of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB). The meeting will take place at the Convention Center Dublin, Ireland from July 10–14, 2015 and will bring together scientists from across the globe working in a broad range of computational biology-related disciplines including genomics, structural biology, proteomics, data mining, machine learning and systems biology. In the past, presentations at the meeting have been organized according to tracks: Proceedings, Highlights and Late Breaking Research tracks. Combined with the multiple track presentation, this caused frustration for attendees when choosing which sessions to attend. In 2015 all oral presentations will be presented in broad theme areas. As in the past, submissions accepted into the highly selective Proceedings track will be published in a special ISMB/ECCB Proceedings issue of Bioinformatics. Conference co-chairs Alex Bateman, Janet Kelso and Desmond Higgins and the conference committee undertook the reorganization effort and came up with five theme areas: Genes, Proteins, Systems, Disease and Data. Batemen said, ‘The idea of themes is an obvious way to organize the talks. But, selecting a small number of themes that represented all computational biology was challenging. Of course many talks will potentially fit across several themes. Time will tell whether these need any tweaking for future meetings’. Kelso believes the new organization will benefit attendees and said, ‘We hope that organizing the meeting more thematically will mean that attendees have an easier time identifying sessions that are relevant and interesting to them’. Five leading scientists have been named as theme chairs and will organize the selection of presentations from each traditional submission cateogry for each theme area. They are Yana Bromberg of Rutgers University (Disease), Janet Kelso of Max Planck Institute (Data), Nicolas Le Novere of the Babraham Institute (Systems), Martin Vingron of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics (Genes) and Ioannis Xenarios of the University of Lausanne (Proteins). As in the past, the keynote speaker line up features world-class scientists. The speakers include Amos Bairoch of the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (ISCB Fellows Keynote), Cyrus Chothia of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (Senior Scientist Award winner), Eileen Furlong of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Curtis Huttenhower of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (Overton Prize winner), 2013 Nobel Laureate Michael Levitt of Stanford University and Kenneth Wolfe of University College Dublin. The main conference program takes place from Sunday, July 12 through Tuesday, July 14. In the tradition of previous ISMB/ECCB meetings, Special Interest Group (SIGs) and Satellite Meetings will occur prior to the conference on Thursday, July 10 and Friday, July 11. This year, the tutorials and workshops that usually precede the main meeting are being replaced by applied knowledge exchange sessions (AKES). The AKES are scheduled for Saturday, July 11 and are designed to provide interactive educational and knowledge exchange opportunities for attendees. AKES will also provide a chance for junior principle investigators to meet and exchange career advice. Six AKES have been scheduled: