Bosc

The BOSC-OBF 2021 Event Support Fund was awarded to Ariel Mundo Ortiz, a researcher from the University of Arkansas, to participate in BOSC 2021, an annual conference hosted by the Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF). Based on the OBF Event Fellowship program, this fund aimed to facilitate the participation of diverse researchers from historically underrepresented groups at BOSC to help wider awareness and adoption of open source bioinformatics practices in the biological research community. Find more information here.

The BOSC-OBF 2021 Event Support Fund was awarded to David Twesigomwe, a PhD student based at the Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience (SBIMB) - South Africa, to participate in BOSC 2021, an annual conference hosted by the Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF). Based on the OBF Event Fellowship program, this fund aimed to facilitate participation of diverse researchers from historically underrepresented groups at BOSC to help wider awareness and adoption of open source bioinformatics practices in the biological research community. Find more information here.

BOSC 2021, which is a track (COSI) of ISMB/ECCB 2021, will take place online the 29th and 30th of July. The complete schedule is here.

The event is being held in the Showcare platform – check out our tips for making the most of your online conference experience.

We invite all attendees to join us at the pre-BOSC happy hour at the BOSC [roundtable](http://All attendees are invited to our pre-BOSC happy hour today from 17:30-18:30 UTC! Look for us at the BOSC roundtable. https://ismbeccb2021.showcare.io/roundtables/) on Wednesday, July 28, from 17:30-18:30 UTC!

Birds of a Feather (BoFs) are informal, self-organized meetups focused on specific topics. They are a great way to meet other like-minded community members and have an in-depth discussion on a topic of shared interest.

BoFs at ISMB/ECCB 2021 will take place each day of the meeting except the last day, at the same time as the poster session (not ideal, we know–but there are only so many viable hours in the day), from 15:20-16:20 UTC. We recommend that you choose either Thursday, July 29 (the first day of BOSC) or Wednesday, July 28 (the day before BOSC).

Thanks to funding from our sponsors, we are opening a special call for applications to the BOSC-OBF Event Support Fund. This fund aims to increase participation of members from groups otherwise underrepresented in BOSC or in bioinformatics community events in general, including but not limited to underrepresented demographic groups (country of residence and citizenship), ethnic background (historically underrepresented and other minority groups), career stages, gender identity and expression, people with disabilities and members from low income/resource organisations.

There’s still a chance to submit your abstract in the Late Poster round, which closes June 3 at 11:59pm ET!

What about late-breaking lightning talks? Unfortunately/fortunately, we got so many high-quality abstracts in the early round, we were not able to save any talk slots for the late round. Talk slots will open up only if some early-round speakers decide not to attend the conference.

Abstract format. To be considered for a poster, you only need to submit a 200-word short abstract. However, you should feel free to add a PDF (2 pages max) that better describes your work! Your PDF should include the title, author name(s), open source license, and code or project URL (even though this information is also requested on the submission form). Accepted abstracts are published on the BOSC website as-is.

BOSC is organized entirely by volunteers. We are lucky to have these amazing people on the Organizing Committee this year!

Jason Williams( @JasonWilliamsNY) is a new member of the BOSC Organizing Committee, though he’s been a BOSC participant and an abstract reviewer for years. Jason was a BOSC panelist in 2015 on a panel about increasing diversity in open source bioinformatics, and again in 2018 for a panel about training and documentation in open source bioinformatics.

Are you thinking of writing an abstract for BOSC? We’re here to help! The BOSC Organizing Committee is holding two “abstract parties” that will be fun collaborative work sessions. We’ll start by giving some tips for writing a great BOSC abstract, and then open the floor to questions and “workshopping”: show us your in-progress abstract, and we’ll give you helpful suggestions. Or you can just attend and work on your abstract in silent solidarity with others!

BOSC 2021 will take place July 29-30, as part of ISMB/ECCB 2021 Online.

Key Dates

May 6, 2021 (11:59pm EDT): Deadline for submitting one-page talk/poster abstracts May 27: Talk/poster acceptance notifications June 3: Late poster (and Late-Breaking Lightning Talk) submission deadline June 10: Late poster / LBLT acceptance notifications July 29-30: BOSC 2021 Online (part of ISMB/ECCB 2021 Online) July 31-Aug 1: CollaborationFest (CoFest)

About BOSC 2021

BOSC is returning to ISMB in 2021, after a successful partnership with Galaxy for the first Bioinformatics Community Conference last year (BCC2020 online). Originally slated to take place in Lyon, France, ISMB/ECCB 2021 will be held online, and features over a dozen tracks, including BOSC. As usual, BOSC will include keynote talks, longer and shorter (lightning) talks from submitted abstracts, posters, Birds of a Feather, and more!

The call for applications for the OBF Event Fellowship 2021, round 1 is now open. The deadline for this round is 1 April 2021. Applications should be submitted via this Google Form.

We invite applications from candidates who are seeking financial support to attend or host virtual events in 2021. The selected awardees can use the OBF Event Fellowship to cover conference registration fees and potentially additional expenses associated with attending or hosting the event, such as small hardware (microphone, speaker, webcam), childcare for the duration of the event and high-speed internet. Like last year, in this round, we will consider applications to attend or host virtual events only. This decision has been made due to the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic induced lockdown and restricted travels. Expenses that will be incurred by remote participation have to be justified in the application and will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.