Announcing BOSC 2025; seeking keynote speaker nominations

We invite you to join us for BOSC 2025, a vibrant gathering at the forefront of open-source bioinformatics and open science! Location: Liverpool, UK, and virtual Dates: July 21-22, 2025 Website: /events/bosc/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/14344023/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/bosc.bsky.social Slack: https://join.slack.com/t/obf-bosc/shared_invite/zt-n5ur1gsj-z2C~69_4lYTFPg5tbWA8Ew Key Dates January 16, 2025: Deadline for community nominations of keynote speakers April 17: Deadline for submitting talk/poster abstracts May 13: Talk/poster acceptance notifications May 15: Late poster submission deadline July 20-24: ISMB/ECCB 2025 July 21-22: BOSC 2025 (the first two full days of ISMB/ECCB 2025) July 23-24: ISMB CollaborationFest About BOSC [Read More]

BOSC CollaborationFest 2023 Report

CollaborationFest, CoFest for short, is a collaborative work event that has been held each of the past 13 years as a satellite event of BOSC. At these free events, held right before or after BOSC, participants gather in small groups to exchange ideas and work together on projects including but not limited to hacking. Participants were encouraged to submit their project ideas in advance to facilitate collaboration. CoFest 2023 took place during the two days just before BOSC, which was part of ISMB/ECCB 2023 in Lyon and online. [Read More]

BOSC 2023 Report

The 24th annual Bioinformatics Open Source Conference, BOSC 2023, took place as part of ISMB/ECCB 2023 in Lyon, France, and online. ISMB/ECCB attracted a near-record number of attendees, with over 2100 in person and about 900 more online. Most of the BOSC organizing committee (missing: Jessica Maia and Chris Fields)A full room at BOSC 2023 The opening session of BOSC kicked off with a welcome from chair Nomi Harris. An overview of BOSC’s parent organization, the Open Bioinformatics Foundation, was presented by OBF Board member Bastian Greshake Tzovaras. [Read More]

Daniela Senra: My Experience at the Human Cell Atlas General Meeting 2023

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. Daniela Senra, a PhD researcher at Centro Regional de Estudios Genómicos, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, was awarded an OBF Event Fellowship to attend the Human Cell Atlas General Meeting 2023. In July, I had the incredible opportunity to attend and present a lightning talk at the Human Cell Atlas General Meeting 2023, that took place in the city of Toronto, Canada, from July 10th to July 12th, 2023. [Read More]

Call for the second round of OBF Event Fellowship 2023 and the first 2023 round overview.

The call for applications for the OBF Event Fellowship 2023, round 2, is now open. The deadline for this round is 1 August 2023. Applications should be submitted via 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. [Read More]

ISCBacademy webinar on Patient-Led Research

Date and Time: Tuesday, March 14, 11am EDT/ 15:00 (not 16:00!) UTC Location: Online webinar hosted by ISCB and free to the public. (Video now available at https://youtu.be/M2vAotWKd_Q) Speaker: Hannah Wei, co-founder and technologist at the Patient-Led Research Collaborative Topic: Re-Thinking the Patient’s Role in a Learning Health System: Lessons from the Patient-Led Research Collaborative The ISCB, which runs the annual ISMB conference, is offering a series of ISCBacademy webinars hosted by the Communities of Special Interest (COSIs), which include BOSC/OBF. [Read More]

Call for the second round of OBF Event Fellowship 2022 & overview from the first round

The call for applications for the OBF Event Fellowship 2022, round 2 is now open. The deadline for this round is 1 October 2022. Applications should be submitted via this Google Form. We have provided a Word template to help you draft the application locally before filling the form – make a copy of this template. We invite applications from candidates who are seeking financial support to attend or host relevant scientific events from late October 2022 to April 2023. [Read More]

My trip to the EMBO neural stem cells workshop

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. Jemima Becker, DPhil student at Merton College, University of Oxford, attended the EMBO workshop: “Neural stem cells: From basic understanding to translational applications", supported by this fellowship granted to him in the first round of 2022. This June, I had the opportunity to travel to the EMBO workshop: “Neural stem cells: From basic understanding to translational applications”. [Read More]

Furkan M. Torun: Highlights of my participation at PyCon IT 2022

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. Furkan M. Torun, Data Scientist at OmicEra Diagnostics & Computational Biologist, attended the PyCon Italia 2022, supported by this fellowship granted to him in the first round of 2022. Background As it is shown in the surveys of the programming languages used and the latest publications in the field of bioinformatics/computational biology, Python has experienced unprecedented growth. [Read More]

Gemma Turon: Highlights of my participation at the BOSC-2021 conference thanks to an OBF Event Fellowship

The BOSC-OBF 2021 Event Support Fund enabled awardees to register for free for BOSC 2021, an annual conference hosted by the Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF), which promotes and facilitates the open source bioinformatics development and open science. Based on the OBF Event Fellowship program, the BOSC-OBF support fund aimed to facilitate participation of diverse researchers from historically underrepresented groups at BOSC, helping to spread wider awareness and adoption of open source bioinformatics practices in the biological research community. [Read More]