Travel-Fellowship

ISMB/ECCB 2025: Liverpool, LLMs and Lessons in Open Science

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. Muhamad Haries Ramdhani, a PhD Student at the University of Aberdeen, was awarded an OBF Event Fellowship to attend the ISMB/ECCB 2025.

The Journey to Liverpool

I had heard about ISMB before, but I wasn’t entirely clear on its joint conference format with ECCB. What I did know was that ISMB/ECCB is arguably the biggest conference for computational biology in the world. For months, my attendance felt uncertain, as I initially didn’t know if the 2025 edition would be held in the UK. When the location was confirmed as Liverpool, it was a huge relief. Being a UK-based student meant I was fortunate enough to avoid a lengthy and often stressful visa application process.

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. Tayyaba Alvi, a PhD student at Fritz Lipmann Institute on Aging, was awarded an OBF Event Fellowship to attend the ISMB2025.

ISMB 2025: A Week of Learning, Teaching, and Connecting in Liverpool

Thanks to the Event Fellowship from the Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF), I had the chance to attend the 33rd Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB 2025) in Liverpool. It’s the annual meeting of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) and the biggest conference in the field. This year, it brought together over 2,000 researchers from all over the world at ACC Liverpool, a beautiful venue right by the Albert Dock.

The call for applications for round 2 of the OBF Event Fellowship for 2025 is now open. The deadline for this round is 1 August 2025. 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 August 1, 2025.

Thanks to the Event Fellowship from Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF), I was privileged to attend the 2025 International Statistical Genetics Workshop (ISG). ISG is an intensive, week-long workshop held annually in Boulder, Colorado that provides hands-on training in the principles and application of over a dozen open-access bioinformatics tools for analysis of genomic data. This workshop has been running since 1987 and boasts a faculty of world-renowned experts in statistical genetics from around the globe. The curriculum switches annually between family-based and population-based genetic studies. The focus this year was on the theory, performance, and interpretation of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and their downstream analyses.

The call for applications for round 1 of the OBF Event Fellowship for 2025 is now open. The deadline for this round is 1 April 2025. 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, 2025. (For those who want to apply for BOSC, note that this is earlier than the BOSC/ISMB submission deadline of April 17.)

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. Keerthana Padmanabhan, a PhD researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru, INDIA, was awarded an OBF Event Fellowship to attend the Transatlantic Behavioral Neuroscience Summer School 2024 (TBNSS 2024).

In September 2024, I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the Transatlantic Behavioral Neuroscience Summer School 2024 (TBNSS 2024) conducted in Mikolajki, Poland, from September 9th to 20th 2024 by the Nencki Open Lab, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology PAS, Poland. First and foremost, this was made possible by the travel fellowship granted to me by the Open Bioinformatics Foundation, for which I am extremely grateful.

The call for applications for round 3 of the OBF Event Fellowship for 2024 is now open. The deadline for this round is 1 December 2024. 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 January and December 2025. 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.

The call for applications for the OBF Event Fellowship 2024, round 2, is now open. The deadline for this round is 1 August 2024. 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. We invite applications from candidates seeking financial support to attend relevant scientific events from September 2024 to March 2025. 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.

The call for applications for the OBF Event Fellowship 2024, round 1, is now open. The deadline for this round is 1 April 2024. 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. We invite applications from candidates seeking financial support to attend relevant scientific events from May 2024 to December 2024. 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.

The call for applications for the OBF Event Fellowship 2023, round 3, is now open. The deadline for this round is 1 December 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. We invite applications from candidates seeking financial support to attend relevant scientific events from January 2024 to August 2024. 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.