On 19 and 20 April, more than 300 people working in bioinformatics or systems biology gathered in Lunteren for the annual Dutch Bioinformatics & Systems Biology conference. “The atmosphere was very nice”, says Alvise Trevisan from DTL partner ENPICOM. “Even as a first time visitor, I could immediately see the collaborative spirit.”
Photo: BioSB 2016 opening, Credit: Bas van Breukelen
This year’s programme was highly diverse, featuring keynote lectures, parallel thematic sessions, an evening poster session, three ELIXIR-NL tracks and an entertaining evening programme. The participants discussed the latest developments in bioinformatics, systems and computational biology, and their wide-ranging applications in life sciences & health, agriculture, food & nutrition.
The added value of interdisciplinary collaboration clearly emerged from several presentations. For instance, Daniel Huson shared his experiences in his keynote lecture about the computational analysis of microbiome sequencing data. “It was an eye opener to sit next to somebody who was using my software. It was horrifying”, he said.
Photo: Daniel Huson, Credit: Bas van Breukelen
With more than 300 participants, the conference welcomed a record number of participants. Chair of the session ‘Genotype/Phenotype and disease’ Ko Willems Van Dijk (LUMC) says: “The number of participants was impressive this year. Our session was well-visited and very interactive.“
Awards
Three prizes were awarded during the conference:
* Sara Pulit (UMC Utrecht) is the winner of the BioSB Young Investigator Award 2016.
* Erdogan Taskesen (TU Delft) won the first poster prize with the poster ‘Epigenetic analysis of patients with FTD/MND indicate a role for pathways involved in neurological development and calcium ion binding’.
* Amin Allahyar (TU Delft) won the second poster prize with the poster ‘Disesase specific network with application in network based outcome prediction’.
Photo: Sara Pulit, Credit: Bas van Breukelen
“The exceptional quality of the theses and posters that were submitted illustrates that the Dutch bioinformatics and systems biology community is doing very well”, says Chair of the Award Committee Berend Snel.
Organisation
The conference was co-organised by the BioSB research school and DTL partner Wageningen University & Research Centre. The BioSB research school aims to offer a vibrant national environment for the scientific development and education of integrative bioinformatics and computational (systems) biology. BioSB underpins the integrative and cross-disciplinary activities within DTL, and closely liaises with the DTL Data and Learning programmes. In addition, BioSB provides an anchor to the European Infrastructures active in the computational life sciences such as ISBE and ELIXIR.
Missed it?
If you could not join us this year, you may want to read participants’ tweets ( #BioSB2016 ), find more information on the conference website, download the abstracts of the sessions, read the poster abstracts, or look at the photo gallery.
Photo: poster session, Credit: Bas van Breukelen