O'Reilly & Associates is pleased to announce its first Bioinformatics Technology Conference, an event exploring the engineering, software development, and tool-building aspects of bioinformatics. The conference will be held January 28 - 31, 2002 at the La Paloma resort in Tucson, AZ.

Registration

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Keynote Speakers

Confirmed keynote speakers are:

• Ewan Birney, European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI)
• Terry Gaasterland, Rockefeller University
• Gene Myers, Celera Genomics
• James Ostell, NCBI
• Lincoln D. Stein, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Overview

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Bioinformatics is the art and science of using computational tools to find answers to biological questions. Practitioners in both biology and computer science struggle to understand the mission, mindset, and issues faced by the other. This conference attempts to bridge the gap between the communities and address the pragmatic issues of bioinformatics: how to get the job done.

Geneticists, molecular biologists, and computer scientists have a lot to learn from one another. Many efforts are underway in the life sciences -- both in industry and academia -- to build the next generation of high-performance tools and infrastructure to allow bioinformatics to advance the state of post-genome informatics. This conference approaches bioinformatics from the user's perspective: "What are the interesting tools and techniques, how can I apply them to my research, which should I choose, and how can I develop my own?"

We will consider interesting proposals on any topic in bioinformatics, but we are particularly interested in proposals covering:

• How is bioinformatics changing?
• How computational techniques can be applied to biological questions
• Open Source resources for bioinformatics
• Distributed computing and clustering for bioinformatics
• Software engineering (how large development projects succeed or fail)
• Laboratory information management
• Bioinformatics training/education (both from the academic and industry perspectives)
• Sequence analysis (including BLAST and FASTA)
• Prediction of structure and function
• Visualization of structure
• Gene finding
• Restriction maps
• Clone libraries
• Parsing
• Dynamic programming
• Neural networks
• Hidden Markov models
• Database interoperability and format conversion
• Data standards, community acceptance of new standards, compliance, publication requirements
• Data mining
• Biological databases from simple to elaborate
• Bio{perl, python, java, corba, xml, ruby} and other programming for bioinformatics
• Morality, responsibility, and privacy issues in bioinformatics

Participation

Individuals and companies interested in making presentations, giving a tutorial, or participating in panel discussions are invited to submit proposals.

Because the bioinformatics revolution is both young and far reaching, we're casting a wide net. We are interested in ideas and techniques that focus on innovative and practical ways of using tools to extract, process, or predict information that advances biological science, research, education, or commercial activity. We're also interested in hearing about case studies and novel solutions to difficult problems.

We've established two overarching themes for our tutorials: computing for biologists, and biology for programmers. We're interested in sessions that help give biologists and computational scientists background and vocabulary to understand the other, and get the most out of each conference session. Presentations should lean more towards the pragmatic aspects of using or extending existing bioinformatics tools and techniques. When do you use them? What works? What doesn't? What can be done to improve current tools?

Session presentations are 45 minutes long, and tutorials are 3 hours. If you are interested in participating in or moderating panel discussions, or otherwise contributing to the conference, please let us know (and please include your area of expertise). If you have an idea for a panel discussion or a particularly provocative group of panelists that you'd love to see square off, feel free to send in your suggestions.

Submitting Proposals

Please fill out our online submission form. Keep in mind that proposals need not be works of art. A quick summary or abstract of the talk or tutorial you plan to give is sufficient for consideration. You can find samples of required text on the submission page.

NOTE: All presenters whose talks are accepted will receive free registration at the conference.

Important Dates

Events

The conference features:

• An informal poster session open to both speakers and attendees
• Guru sessions, where you can ask questions of expert computer scientists, geneticists, and molecular biologists
• Practical tools sessions, where experienced bioinformaticists, biologists, and programmers teach real-world tools and practices
• Introductory sessions, where biologists can learn more about programming, and programmers can learn about biology
• BoF (Birds of a Feather) sessions where you can connect with people who share your interests (e.g. bioperl, peer-to-peer computing, C. elegans, or even a jam session for the musicians among you.)
• The first annual Biology Quiz Show, hosted by Jon Orwant. Jon is the host of the popular "Internet Quiz Show" featured each year at the O'Reilly Open Source Conference

Registration and Lodging

Registration will open in Fall 2001. Although all talks and events will take place at the La Paloma, alternative housing (for those on a budget) convenient to the conference will also be available.

Exhibition and Sponsorship

If you are interested in exhibiting or sponsoring the conference, telephone Andrew Calvo at 707.829-0515, ext. 441, or email andrewc@oreilly.com.