ISCB (International Society for Computational Biology)

style="font-size: larger;" | **International Society for Computational Biology**

Founded	1997
Home Page	International Society for Computational Biology
Current ISCB Officers
President	Burkhard Rost, Technical University Munich
Vice-president	Terry Gaasterland, University of California, San Diego University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego, commonly known as UCSD or UC San Diego, is a public research university located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States...
Vice-president	Michal Linial, Hebrew University of Jerusalem Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ; ; abbreviated HUJI) is Israel's second-oldest university, after the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Hebrew University has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. The world's largest Jewish studies library is located on its Edmond J...
Vice-president	Scott Markel, Accelrys Accelrys Accelrys is a software company headquartered in the US, with representation in Europe and Japan. It provides software for chemical, materials and bioscience research for the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, consumer packaged goods, aerospace, energy and chemical industries.Accelrys started in 2001...
Treasurer	Reinhard Schneider, EMBL
Secretary	Janet Kelso, Max-Planck Institute
Executive Officer	BJ Morrison-McKay

The International Society for Computational Biology, ISCB, is a scholarly society for researchers in computational biology

Computational biology

Computational biology involves the development and application of data-analytical and theoretical methods, mathematical modeling and computational simulation techniques to the study of biological, behavioral, and social systems...

and bioinformatics

Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics is the application of computer science and information technology to the field of biology and medicine. Bioinformatics deals with algorithms, databases and information systems, web technologies, artificial intelligence and soft computing, information and computation theory, software...

. Founded in 1997, the society's core mission is to contribute to the scientific understanding of living systems through computation.

ISCB seeks to communicate the significance of computational biology to the larger scientific community, to governmental organizations, and to the general public; the society serves its members locally, nationally, and internationally; it provides guidance for scientific policies, publications, meetings, and distributes information through multiple platforms. ISCB organizes the Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology

Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology

Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology is a scientific meeting on the subjects of bioinformatics and computational biology organized by the International Society for Computational Biology . Its principal focus is on the development and application of advanced computational methods for...

, ISMB, conference every year, a growing number of smaller, more regionally or topically focused annual and bi-annual conferences, and has two official journals: PLoS Computational Biology
PLoS Computational Biology
PLoS Computational Biology is a peer-reviewed computational biology journal established in 2005 and published by the nonprofit Public Library of Science in association with the International Society for Computational Biology. Its Editor in Chief is Philip Bourne...

and Bioinformatics
Bioinformatics (journal)
Bioinformatics is a peer-reviewed scientific journal publishing original research and software in computational biology. It is the official journal of the International Society for Computational Biology, together with PLoS Computational Biology. Authors can pay extra for open access and are allowed...

. The society awards two prizes each year, the Overton Prize

Overton Prize

The Overton Prize is an annual prize is awarded for outstanding accomplishment to a scientist in the early to mid stage of his or her career who has already made a significant contribution to the field of computational biology either through research, education, service, or a combination of the three...

and the Accomplishment by a Senior Scientist Award

Accomplishment by a Senior Scientist Award

The Accomplishment by a Senior Scientist Award is an annual prize awarded by the International Society for Computational Biology for contributions to the field of computational biology.-Laureates:*2011 - Michael Ashburner*2010 - *2009 - Webb Miller...

, and it inducts Fellows, to honor members that have distinguished themselves through outstanding contributions to the fields of computational biology and bioinformatics.

ISCB Leadership

A president, an executive committee, and a board of directors comprise ISCB's scientific leadership, drawing on distinguished, internationally renowned researchers who are elected for their term by the general society membership. The executive officer leads the ISCB staff and supports a diverse set of committees dedicated to specific issues that are important to the computational biology and bioinformatics community, including education, policy, and publications.

Aims

ISCB has the following aims:

Intellectual Leadership
Advocacy
Financial Stability
Governance

Conferences

ISCB grew out of the need for a stable organizational structure to support the planning and manage the finances of the Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology

Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology

(ISMB) conference series, which had its start in 1993. ISMB is ISCB's most prominent annual activity, toward which a significant portion of resources are dedicated each year. Since 2004, when ISMB is held in Europe, it is held jointly with the European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB).

ISCB began expanding its conference offerings with the introduction of the annual Rocky Mountain Bioinformatics Conference series in 2003, the annual Conference on Semantics in Healthcare and Life Sciences (CSHALS) in 2008, the bi-annual ISCB Africa ASBCB Conference on Bioinformatics in 2009, and the bi-annual ISCB Latin America Conference in 2010. Future plans include the development of an ISCB Asia Conference.

In addition to ISCB-organized conferences, the society supports other computational biology and bioinformatics conferences through affiliations and sponsorships. These include the annual Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing or PSB, the annual international conference on Research in Computational Molecular Biology or RECOMB, the annual Asia-Pacific Bioinformatics Network's International Conference on Computational Biology or InCoB, and the annual general meeting of the European Molecular Biology Network or EMBnet.

ISCB Official Journals

Bioinformatics. Bioinformatics
Bioinformatics (journal)
Bioinformatics is a peer-reviewed scientific journal publishing original research and software in computational biology. It is the official journal of the International Society for Computational Biology, together with PLoS Computational Biology. Authors can pay extra for open access and are allowed...

was the society's journal from 1998–2004, and ISMB Proceedings have been published there since 2001. In 2009 Bioinformatics again became an official journal of ISCB.

PLoS Computational Biology. PLoS Computational Biology
PLoS Computational Biology
PLoS Computational Biology is a peer-reviewed computational biology journal established in 2005 and published by the nonprofit Public Library of Science in association with the International Society for Computational Biology. Its Editor in Chief is Philip Bourne...

is an open-access, peer-reviewed journal published monthly by the Public Library of Science
Public Library of Science
The Public Library of Science is a nonprofit open-access scientific publishing project aimed at creating a library of open access journals and other scientific literature under an open content license...

(PLoS). It became an official journal of ISCB in 2005.

Affiliated Organizations

The ISCB has several affiliated organizations (mainly regional), including:

Africa

African Society for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology

Asia

Asia Pacific Bioinformatics Network
Association for Medical and Bioinformatics Singapore
Bioinformatics in India
Japanese Society for Bioinformatics
Korean Society for Bioinformatics (KSBI)
Bioinformatics Society Taiwan

Europe and Middle East

Czech Free and Open Bioinformatics Association (FOBIA)
Israeli Society for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
Bioinformatics Italian Society (BITS)
German Informatics Society—professional group: Informatics for Life Sciences
Society for Bioinformatics in the Nordic Countries (SocBiN)
Netherlands Bioinformatics Center (NBIC)
European Molecular Biology Network (EMBnet)
EMBnet
EMBnet is an international network that aims to enhance bioinformatics services by bringing together bioinformatics service providers. On 2011 EMBnet has 37 nodes spread over 32 countries...

North America

Bay Area Bioinformatics Discussion Group
Boston Area Molecular Biology Computer Types (BAMBCT)
Central Valley Bioinformatics Interest Group (CVBIG)
Great Lakes Bioinformatics Consortium
Midsouth Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Society (MCBIOS)
Ohio Bioinformatics Consortium
Oklahoma Bioinformatics Society (OKBIOS)
Rocky Mountain Regional Center for Computational Biology
Vancouver Bioinformatics User Group
Mexico EMBnet (Collado)
New England Bioinformatics Group (NEBiG)
University of Texas at Austin, Society of Computational Biology

South America

Brazilian Association for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology

Historical Overview

In 1996 the ISMB conference steering committee thought it would be useful to start a scientific society focused on managing all scientific, organizational, and financial aspects of the ISMB conference and to provide a forum for scientists to address the emerging role of computers in the biological sciences. The International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB), was legally incorporated in the US in 1997 with Larry Hunter

Lawrence Hunter

Professor Lawrence Hunter is Director of the Center for Computational Biology and of the Computational Bioscience Program at the University of Colorado School of Medicine...

, currently director of the Center for Computational Pharmacology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and the university's computational bioscience program, elected as its inaugural president by the members of the founding board of directors: Pankaj Agarwal, Russ Altman

Russ Altman

Professor Russ Biagio Altman, MD, PhD, is a scientist at Stanford University Medical School, where he is chair of the department of Bioengineering and director of the program in Biomedical Informatics...

, Douglas Brutlag, Dominic Clark, Keith Dunker, Janice Glasgow, Rick Lathrop, Peter Karp, Asai Kiyoshi, Teri Klein, Chris Overton, Christos Ouzounis, David Searls, Jude Shavlik, Randall Smith, David States

David States

David J. States M.D., Ph.D. is a at the University of Michigan. His research group is using computational methods to understand the human genome and how it relates to the human proteome. He is the Director of the Michigan NIH and a Senior Scientist in the ....

, Alfonso Valencia, and Shoshana Wodak.

During the next few years the focus remained on management of the annual ISMB conference, whose 1993 attendance of approximately 200 researchers had more than tripled by 1999. That year Bioinformatics (previously published as CABIOS) by Oxford University Press

Oxford University Press

Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...

became the official journal of the ISCB. Dues-paying members of the society gained two tangible benefits of membership: ISMB conference registration discounts and an online subscription to the journal.
The new millennium brought in a new president in Russ Altman , currently chair of Stanford University's department of bioengineering and director of the program in biomedical informatics, and over 1,200 delegates attended ISMB 2000 in San Diego. Altman took steps to formalize some of the legal and administrative aspects of ISCB before passing the torch in 2002 to Philip E. Bourne, currently professor in the department of pharmacology and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. Bourne gave ISCB a more permanent home at UCSD, which included the university's commitment to host the society through at least 2005 and its offer of staff support. Although Bourne served as president for only one year, he left his mark on the society by increasing the interaction with regional groups and conference organizers worldwide, and through an improved web presence. During his tenure, membership grew to more than 1700 researchers, and the 2002 ISMB conference in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada welcomed over 1,600 attendees.

In 2002 ISCB Vice President Anna Tramontano initiated the Affiliated Regional Groups program to promote relationship-building among bioinformatics

Bioinformatics

groups worldwide. The program offers a structure for mutual recognition and information exchange between the ISCB and other bioinformatics groups, so they can cross-promote news and events.

In the fall of 2002 the first European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB) was held in Saarbrücken

Saarbrücken

Saarbrücken is the capital of the state of Saarland in Germany. The city is situated at the heart of a metropolitan area that borders on the west on Dillingen and to the north-east on Neunkirchen, where most of the people of the Saarland live....

, Germany, which ISCB supported through student travel fellowships and many ISCB members and leaders attended.

Michael Gribskov, then at UCSD's San Diego Supercomputer department and now at the department of biological sciences at Purdue University, was elected president in 2003. That year ISMB took place in Brisbane

Brisbane

Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...

, Australia, which was the first time the meeting was held outside North America or Europe. This phase brought many uncertainties for the society when attendance dropped to one half of budgeted expectations due to travel fears and restrictions related to outbreaks of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS, the start of the war in Iraq, and the location, which broke with the pattern of North American and European venues. Although scientifically successful, the financial losses of ISMB 2003 left ISCB financially unstable for the first time in its history.

In part to reduce ISCB's dependence on ISMB proceeds to fund the society's activities and annual overhead costs, a pilot regional conference was hosted in the US to gauge interest in smaller, localized meetings. In December 2003, the Rocky Mountain Regional Bioinformatics conference, Rocky 1, was launched in Aspen

Aspen

Populus section Populus, of the Populus genus, includes the aspen trees and the white poplar Populus alba. The five typical aspens are all native to cold regions with cool summers, in the north of the Northern Hemisphere, extending south at high altitudes in the mountains. The White Poplar, by...

, Colorado. The meeting has been held annually ever since and now attracts attendees from around the world.

In 2004 ISMB, ECCB and Genes, Proteins and Computers VIII (GPCVIII) partnered for a joint conference in Glasgow

Glasgow

Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...

, Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

, and included two parallel tracks of original paper presentations for the first time. As ISCB's contract with the journal Bioinformatics was drawing to a close, the society moved to an optional online subscription plan for members since many scientists worked and studied at institutions that already held institutional subscriptions, therefore, negating the earlier need for individual subscriptions for all members.

That year also marks the launch of the ISCB Student Council, which builds opportunities of students and young researchers working in computational biology and bioinformatics. During an internship in Phil Bourne's lab while still a PhD student, Manuel Corpas, now a scientist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, developed the idea for a student council to give leadership opportunities and encourage networking among student members worldwide, and was elected as its first council chair in 2005.

In 2005, as part of the society's discussions about the role of publications and the society's official journal, accompanied by the advent of open access publishing, the ISCB announced a partnership with the Public Library of Science

Public Library of Science

The Public Library of Science is a nonprofit open-access scientific publishing project aimed at creating a library of open access journals and other scientific literature under an open content license...

and launched a new open access journal, PLoS Computational Biology. The journal is intended to emphasize computational methods applied to living systems at all scales, from molecular biology to patient populations and ecosystems, and which offer insight for experimentalists. Past president and past publications committee chair Phil Bourne served as the new publication's editor-in-chief and he remains in that role. The first issue of the new journal coincided with the opening day of ISMB 2005, held in Detroit, Michigan

Michigan

Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....

.

In 2006 ISMB again ventured away from the pattern of North American and European venues by taking place in Fortaleza

Fortaleza

Fortaleza is the state capital of Ceará, located in Northeastern Brazil. With a population close to 2.5 million , Fortaleza is the 5th largest city in Brazil. It has an area of and one of the highest demographic densities in the country...

, Brazil, in collaboration with the Brazilian Association for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology or AB3C. Once again, the conference was a scientific success and included new tracks to encourage participation of experimentalists as well as computer scientists. But attendance was approximately half of the previous year, which negatively impacted the society finances that had not yet recovered from the losses of 2003. Membership for the year did not dip as drastically as conference attendance, which provided a strong sign for the successful decoupling of membership enrollment and conference registration.

Burkhard Rost, then professor in the department of biochemistry and molecular biophysics at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

and now the Alexander von Humboldt Professor

Alexander von Humboldt Foundation

The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation is a foundation set-up by the government of the Federal Republic and funded by the German Foreign Office, the Ministry of Education and Research, the Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development and others for the promotion of international co-operation...

and chair of bioinformatics and computational biology, computational sciences at the Technical University Munich, succeeded Michael Gribskov as president in 2007 and has been reelected twice with a current term expiration set for January of 2013. Under his tenure the ISMB/ECCB 2007 conference in Vienna, Austria, chaired by Thomas Lengauer of the Max-Planck Institute for Informatics, and co-chaired by Burkhard Rost and Peter Schuster

Peter Schuster

Peter K. Schuster is a renowned theoretical chemist, known for his work with the German Nobel Laureate Manfred Eigen in developing the quasispecies model...

of the University of Vienna

University of Vienna

The University of Vienna is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world...

, was further expanded to include a total of eight parallel tracks, and the 2007 conference attendance of approximately 1,700 was back on track with expectations. Vienna as a destination and the Austria Center Vienna were both so well received by the conference organizers and attendees alike that it was selected to host the 2011 conference as well, which is a first for the ISMB series that had never before repeated a location.

In 2008 ISMB, chaired by Burkhard Rost and co-chaired by Jill Mesirov of the Broad Institute

Broad Institute

The Broad Institute is a genomic medicine research center located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Although it is independently governed and supported as a 501 nonprofit research organization, the institute is formally affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard...

of Harvard and MIT and Michal Linial of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ; ; abbreviated HUJI) is Israel's second-oldest university, after the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Hebrew University has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. The world's largest Jewish studies library is located on its Edmond J...

, with Thomas Hudson

Thomas Hudson

Thomas Hudson may refer to:* Thomas Hudson , British actor* Thomas Hudson , English portrait painter of the eighteenth century...

of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research

Ontario Cancer Institute

The Ontario Cancer Institute is the research division of Princess Margaret Hospital, part of the University Health Network of the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine. As Canada's first dedicated cancer hospital, it opened officially and began to receive patients in 1958, although its...

serving as honorary co-chair, returned to Canada, this time Toronto. Attendance was strong, membership enrollment continued to grow, and the Conference on Semantics for Healthcare and Life Sciences, or CSHALS, was created. Reinhard Schneider, group leader of EMBL-Heidelberg and incoming treasurer of ISCB, launched a new portal for the society that greatly enhanced the interactive functionality of the society's web presence for ISCB members, and improved access to information about computational biology and bioinformatics for the scientific community and general public.

In 2009 ISMB/ECCB, chaired by Eugene Myers

Eugene Myers

Eugene "Gene" Wimberly Myers, Jr. is an American computer scientist and bioinformatician, who is best known for his development of the NCBI's BLAST tool for sequence analysis. His 1990 paper describing BLAST has received over 24000 citations making it among the most highly cited papers ever...

of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Howard Hughes Medical Institute is a United States non-profit medical research organization based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It was founded by the American businessman Howard Hughes in 1953. It is one of the largest private funding organizations for biological and medical research in the United...

Janelia Farm Campus and co-chaired by Marie-France Sagot of INRIA Grenoble, with Gunnar von Heijne

Gunnar von Heijne

Nils Gunnar Hansson von Heijne, born June 10, 1951 in Gothenburg, is a Swedish chemist.Gunnar von Heijne graduated 1975 with a Master of Science degree in chemistry and chemical engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology...

of Stockholm University

Stockholm University

Stockholm University is a state university in Stockholm, Sweden. It has over 28,000 students at four faculties, making it one of the largest universities in Scandinavia. The institution is also frequently regarded as one of the top 100 universities in the world...

serving as honorary co-chair, was held in Stockholm, Sweden. ISCB membership reached a new high, the student council initiated a regional student groups program to foster interactions between student groups around the world, and ISCB organized the first ISCB Africa ASBCB joint conference on bioinformatics with the African Society for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology in Bamako, Mali.

In 2010 ISMB, chaired by Olga Troyanskaya of Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

and co-chaired by Jill Mesirov and Michal Linial, was held in Boston, USA. The first ISCB Latin America, chaired by Daniel Almonacid, a postdoc at the University of California, San Francisco

University of California, San Francisco

The University of California, San Francisco is one of the world's leading centers of health sciences research, patient care, and education. UCSF's medical, pharmacy, dentistry, nursing, and graduate schools are among the top health science professional schools in the world...

and Lucia Peixoto, then a PhD candidate and now a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

, was held in Montevideo, Uruguay.

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