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.)
We invite applications from candidates seeking financial support to attend relevant scientific events between May 2026 to April 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.
Overview of the overall 2025 rounds of OBF Event Fellowship
The Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF) Event Fellowship program is now in its 9th year. Since 2023, we have three application rounds per year with the following deadlines: 1 April, 1 August, and 1 December.
We changed the OBF event fellowship policy to say that the event that the applicant is applying to must be high-quality and not predatory. We also require the applicants and awardees write the application and blog draft themselves, and prohibit the use of AI/LLMs for this. These changes are now integrated in travel_fellowship.md and the OBF Event Fellowship application form.
Looking back at 2025, we received numerous applications, and nine applicants were selected from three rounds across 2025 to support their participation in various events. All OBF Event Fellowship awardees are required to write blog posts after their events; two of the people who were selected for awards in 2025 have not yet attended their events. Seven of them have written blog posts sharing their experiences at events that promote open science and open source bioinformatics, with the support of the OBF Event Fellowship. You can read their posts here:
- Ruby Krasnow: 2025 ESIIL Innovation Summit: Collaborative and Open Environmental Data Science in Boulder
- Tayyaba Alvi: ISMB 2025: A Week of Learning, Teaching, and Connecting in Liverpool
- Muhamad Haries Ramdhani: ISMB/ECCB 2025: Liverpool, LLMs and Lessons in Open Science
- Fatemeh Mirzadeh Sarcheshmeh: Elixir BioHackathon Experience
- Hetvi Jethwani: BioHackathon Europe 2025: A Week full of Brainstorming, Coding & Collaboration
- Rafał Miłodrowski: BioHackathon Europe 2025: BUSCO genes, lakeside hacking, and open workflows
- David Kiragu Mwaura: Bridging Learning Gaps Through Open-Source Tools
Congratulations to all of our awardees! We are delighted to help support their participation in open-source-related events with OBF Event Fellowships, and we wish them all the best for their future work.
Please share this post and apply for the fellowship before 1 April 2026.