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The 2020 Bioinformatics Community Conference (BCC2020), which brings together the BOSC and Galaxy communities, will take place online–more info here.

The online meeting will still be held July 18-21. Registration will open in a few weeks, and fees will be lower than for an in-person meeting. Abstract submission will open soon and will close April 30th. We will follow the usual submission and review processes.

We are discussing how to arrange the schedule to allow for participation across the globe. We welcome your input on how to make our first Virtual Bioinformatics Community Conference a success.

In light of the current outbreak, we urge everyone to avoid travelling if possible, in order to slow the rate at which the virus spreads to vulnerable people. You may have read that the BCC (BOSC+Galaxy) committee is delaying registration whilst considering the best options.

With the next travel fellowship deadline approaching on April 1st, we are issuing slightly different advice regarding the types of applications we’d like to see, compared to previous years.

OBF has been selected as a Google Summer of Code mentor organisation for the 5th consecutive time! We are proud to be hosting over 13 projects from various sub-organisations that aim to promote open science. This year OBF’s application was led by Sarthak Sehgal, Kai Blin, Yo Yehudi, and Michael Crusoe. Last year, GSoC 2019, was another good year with five students successfully completing their projects.

Call to students to apply for GSoC

OBF is welcoming students across the globe with a passion for open science to apply for GSoC. You can view the eligibility criteria here and the whole timeline here. The application portal opens on March 16 but feel free to contact the mentors of projects you are interested in already. It’s a fantastic opportunity to write code, learn about open source development, and be a part of a welcoming and diverse community, while earning a stipend! All information about OBF’s GSoC participation can be found here.

We are currently accepting applications for the first application round for the OBF Travel Fellowship 2020. This fellowship aims to promote the conference/event participation of attendees who advocate and present their work related to open-source bioinformatics software development and open science in the biological research community. In 2019, a total of 9 applicants received OBF travel fellowships to attend various conferences across the globe to present their work, gain new skills and promote Open Science practices in their respective areas of life science.

During the public OBF Board Meeting held on December 17, 2019, elections were held for five Board members whose terms were about to expire. All five stood for re-election to the Board, though with some changes of officers:

• Hilmar Lapp: stepped down after 8 years as President of the Board; elected to At-Large seat.
• Peter Cock: elected as President of the Board.
• Heather Wiencko: elected as Treasurer, replacing previous Treasurer Peter Cock.
• Chris Fields: re-elected as Secretary.
• Nomi Harris: re-elected as At-Large Board member.

In accordance with the OBF Bylaws, the newly elected Board members and officers will serve a three-year term.

Two awardees were chosen during the latest round of the OBF Travel Fellowship program, which closed on December 1, 2019. The program, which started in 2018, provides some travel funding to selected applicants who, by attending events in open source / open science, will help to promote diversity in the community.

One of our awardees is Laura Acion from the Instituto de Calculo in Argentina, who will be attending CarpentryCon 2020 (June 29 - July 1 in Madison, WI) and Use R! 2020 (July 7-10 in St. Louis, MO). Because the two conferences will be held fairly near each other in time and geographical location, Laura is optimizing travel by attending both of these meetings.

Biopython 1.76 has been released and is available from our website and PyPI.

Coming relatively soon after our last release, the timing is linked to the official end of life for Python 2, and a focus hereafter on Python 3. We intend this to be our final release supporting Python 2.7 and 3.5. Focusing on Python 3.6 or later will let us take advantage of new functionality and syntax, and simplify our code base and testing.

The Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF) sponsors a Travel Fellowship program aimed at increasing diverse participation at events promoting Open Source bioinformatics software development and open science in the biological research community. Arunav Konwar’s participation at Global Community Biosummit (GCBS), 2019 was supported by this fellowship. Find more information here.

I recently had the opportunity to attend the Global Community Biosummit (GCBS), which took place between October 11-13 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, MA, USA.

Among the core values shared across the OBF community are inclusiveness and welcoming newcomers to contribute, without discrimination. Every year at BOSC, when we ask who is at BOSC for the first time, about half of the audience’s hands go up. To signify the importance of this, both to existing and prospective community members, BOSC successfully advocated several years ago for ISMB to adopt a Code of Conduct by ISMB (which applies to BOSC when it is held as part of ISMB).

The call for OBF travel fellowship to select the next round of awardees is officially open! Please submit your application by filling out this form. Deadline for this round is 1 December 2019.

This fellowship aims to support our community members in attending events that promote open source software development and/or open science in the biological research fields. As the organiser of Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC) since 2000, OBF understands the role of such conferences and wants to support people who can benefit from showcasing their work, learn from each other and promote open science at BOSC or similar events.