Conferences On Bioinformatics

Question

[Leon Palafox]

Hello my dear fellows,

As you know from my last question, I'm just entering the bioinformatics field, (still looking for problems to solve)

My background is CS with special focus on Machine Learning.

I was wondering whether is there an established list of conferences on Bioinf that are well known (ala SCIGRAPH, NIPS, KDD). In pretty much every area there are strong conferences and less known for first time authors.

I would like to know, from your personal experiences which ones do you think are worth submitting and going, to get a good grasp on what's happening in Bioinf.

Thanks

Answer 1

[Neilfws]

A good source for conferences is the website of the International Society for Computational Biology. They organize the annual ISMB meeting (2011 website here). I've attended 2 ISMBs; they are large meetings but usually well worth attending, in my opinion.

I have also heard good reports about the Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing.

Answer 2

[Dave Clements]

I don't have recommendations on specific conferences. However, I do have this list of online calendars that highlight bioinformatics events:

• Bioinformatics (the journal) Calender.
• Nucleic Acids Research (the journal) Calendar
• International Society for Computational Biology Calendar
• EMBnet Calendar
• DDBJ Conferences on Information Biology Calendar
• GMOD Calendar

I do think that the smaller meeting that have a narrower focus are particularly useful.

Answer 3

[Jan Kosinski]

I also vote for ISMB meetings. Plus add ECCB conferences which every two years are organized together with ISMB meetings, and every other year separately in Europe. Note also satellite meetings of ISMB and ECCB, there are always listed on current websites.

Plus perhaps RECOMB http://recomb2012.crg.cat/

However, unless you really talk a lot to big fishes and got into lots of discussions, I don't think that going to those big conferences gives you more "grasp on what's happening in Bioinf" than looking at tables of content of bioinformatic journals from recent years + e.g. looking at topics of Biostar posts.

Answer 4

[Daniel]

Also, for the sharers out there, there is the Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC 2011) which satellites the ISMB 2 days before: http://www.open-bio.org/wiki/BOSC_2011

As I believe the kids these days say, It's going to be off the hook.

Answer 5

[aidan-budd]

iAnn, a resource/service provided by itico aims to produce a curated, non-redundant, list of events (most conferences and courses), many of which are bioinformatics-related (many of the people involved in it are bioinformaticians). Indeed, the ISCB (International Society for Computational Biology, one of the major bioinformatics organisations world-wide) use iAnn to provide a list of relevant events on their own site

It's easy to filter, and the non-redundancy is a really nice feature.

For full disclosure - I am involved in several projects that use iAnn, and know the developers involved in it, so am not unbiased - having said that, my reason for using it and interacting with these guys is that I find the project and output good and useful!

Hope it's useful for some of you.

Answer 6

[Khader Shameer]

WikiCFP: Conferences tagged with Bioinformatics or Computational Biology

Answer 7

[Larry_Parnell]

I would also consider a conference that is local to where you work - this will give you the opportunity to network with people that you could certainly meet over coffee on a day after the conference ends. Maybe there is no such conference in the near future but a seminar series (hopefully with some funds to bring in outside speakers). When there are seminars, sign up to meet the speaker, even if for a few minutes to half hour - you'll gather ideas and polish your delivery of your research.

I'll have to follow this advice myself as our travel allowances have been reduced to zero for the next 6 months.