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. Anastasia Bratulin, a PhD candidate at the Ohio State University, was awarded an OBF Event Fellowship to attend the ISMB 2026.

This July, I had the pleasure of attending the International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) 2026 in Washington, D.C., thanks to the event fellowship from Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF). As a well known conference in the field of computational biology and bioinformatics, ISMB brings together researchers from around the world to share advances in genomics, artificial intelligence, and biomedical data science. It was an exciting week filled with talks on how we can standardize data, use AI in our work, and share our findings in a way that is accessible. For a graduate student working in bioinformatics, BOSC (Bioinformatics Open Source Conference) was a great place to learn about the latest developments in biomedical databases, knowledge graphs, and data integration methods. The conference also provided an incredible opportunity to network with experts while seeing firsthand how the field continues to evolve.

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. Aditya Karna, an undergraduate student at Springfield College, was awarded an OBF Event Fellowship to attend the Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC) 2026.

Attending BOSC/ISMB 2026 in Washington, D.C with support from the Open Bioinformatics Foundation Event fellowship was a very rewarding milestone for me. This was my first time being in a space where open-source software, biology, data infrastructure, and the research community all came together in one place. I had followed some of these ideas from the outside before, but being there in person made the work feel much more real.

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. Francesco Maria Antonio Micocci, a Undergraduate Student at University Of Turin, was awarded an OBF Event Fellowship to attend the BITS2026 Conference and BioHackathon2026.

Attending a conference for the first time and as an undergraduate student can be really intimidating. Finding yourself in rooms filled with affirmed researchers and topics you’ve not studied before. That was exactly the situation I found myself in at the recent Biohackathon and BITS2026 in the beautiful city of Padova.

The call for applications for round 2 of the OBF Event Fellowship for 2026 is now open. The deadline for this round is 1 August 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 OBF Event Fellowship program aims to increase diverse participation at events that promote open-source bioinformatics and/or open science. We invite applications from candidates seeking financial support to attend relevant scientific events between September 2026 to August 2027. These events include conferences, workshops, code fests, hackathons, training courses, collaborative sprints, informal meet-ups or other skill-building and networking events. For more details, please read our OBF Event Fellowship policy document.

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.