BOSC has organized CoFests every year before or after ISMB since 2010. This year, CoFest will take place after ISMB 2026 on Friday, July 17 and Saturday, July 18 (9am-5pm each day). The location is in central Washington, D.C. (not far from the ISMB location); the exact address will be shared with those who register. There will be limited opportunities for virtual participation; videoconferencing is not guaranteed but participants will be able to interact on Slack.

At BOSC 2026, we want to talk about the elephant in the open-source room: Is generative AI an advantage or a hindrance to open source?

We invite abstracts on this topic. Some might be selected to give talks at BOSC (which will be part of ISMB 2026). We may also invite some of the chosen speakers to participate in a panel. The submission deadline is April 9.

The call for applications for round 1 of the OBF Event Fellowship for 2026 is now open. The deadline for this round is 1 April 2026. You can submit your application through this Google Form. We have provided a Word template to help you draft the application locally before filling out the form – make a copy of this template.

The Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF)’s Event Fellowship program is aimed at increasing diverse participation at events promoting open science in the bioinformatics and biological research communities. Awards are made three times a year; the next deadline is April 1, 2026. (For those who want to apply for BOSC, note that this is earlier than the BOSC/ISMB submission deadline of April 9.)

BOSC is part of the big ISMB 2026 conference, so you need to register for ISMB to participate in BOSC.

We recognize that the high price of travel and registration can be a barrier. Below are some ways to apply for financial assistance to attend ISMB / BOSC.

The Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF) Event Fellowship program aims to promote diverse participation at events promoting open-source bioinformatics software development and open science practices in the biological research community. David Kiragu Mwaura,_an Assistant Research Scientist at the Kenya Institute of Primate Research, was awarded an OBF Event Fellowship to attend the 2025 AIBBC conference.

Introduction

My desire to share my masters’ research output in a real world demonstration had finally come to fruition. This was achieved by securing a competitive travel grant from the Open Bioinformatics Foundation Event Fellowship. Leaving the chilly landscapes of Glasgow, Scotland for the warm, tropical weather in my home country, Kenya, I was honored to attend the 2025 African International Biotechnology and Biomedical Conference, where scientists from around the world gather to exchange ideas that directly address Africa’s needs.

The Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF) Event Fellowship program aims to promote diverse participation at events promoting open-source bioinformatics software development and open science practices in the biological research community. I was awarded an OBF Event Fellowship to attend BioHackathon Europe 2025, held 3–7 November at the Esplanade Resort & Spa in Bad Saarow, near Berlin, Germany. I am a PhD student at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, working with insect genomes and large-scale comparative datasets. BUSCO is part of my everyday toolkit, so spending a week contributing to a BUSCO-based phylogenomics workflow with an international team felt like a perfect fit. The fellowship covered my travel costs and made it possible for me to fully participate in the hackathon.

We thank our community for the excellent keynote speaker suggestions for BOSC 2026. The next phase of our selection process invites you to share any concerns about the suitability of the nominated individuals. Our invited speaker selection process and criteria outline the factors we consider when selecting speakers for BOSC 2026, including characteristics that will exclude a speaker.

Please use this anonymous form to submit any concerns, including as much detail as you are comfortable providing, by Friday, January 9th, 2026.

BOSC 2026 is planned for July 14-15, 2026, as part of ISMB 2026 in Washington, DC.

We invite our community to nominate potential keynote speakers who would be of interest to our community. You may submit as many nominations as you wish. The form may be filled out multiple times. Please submit nominations by December 15, 2025.

Why this matters

Keynote talks are always a highlight at BOSC. We traditionally open and close the conference with invited speakers—prominent contributors or emerging leaders whose work resonates with the bioinformatics open-source community.

The Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF) Event Fellowship program aims to promote diverse participation at events promoting open-source bioinformatics software development and open science practices in the biological research community. Fatemeh Mirzade, a PhD researcher at the University of Antwerp, was awarded an OBF Event Fellowship to attend the BioHackathon Europe 2025 (https://biohackathon-europe.org/2025).

My BioHackathon Experience: Contributing to Open Science in Proteomics

From the 3rd to 7th of November 2025, I had an incredible opportunity that shaped my early PhD journey: participating in BioHackathon Europe 2025 as part of Project #29 on proteomics quality control. Thanks to the Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF) Event Fellowship, I joined a team of bioinformaticians and proteomics researchers working to solve a critical challenge in our field.

The Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF) Event Fellowship program aims to promote diverse participation at events promoting open-source bioinformatics software development and open science practices in the biological research community. Hetvi J, a PhD student at Imperial College London, was awarded an OBF Event Fellowship to attend BioHackathon Europe 2025.

Thanks to the Event Fellowship from the Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF), I had the opportunity to attend BioHackathon Europe 2025 located in the beautiful city of Bad Saarow, Germany. I’m currently a 3rd year PhD student in Biostatistics and my work focuses on human mitochondrial genetics. Specifically, I construct statistical models to test whether the presence or absence of somatic mitochondrial variants is associated with gene expression changes indicative of stress and aging. As part of my PhD, I work with single-cell -omics data, and run bioinformatics pipelines over high performance computing systems. My broader interests in the fields of open-source scientific computing and bioinformatics motivated me to participate in this hackathon.