Travel-Fellowship

The OBF Community Support Sponsorship scheme aims to sponsor small open-source-focused events like a scientific meeting, small conference, training workshop, hackathon, or time-limited series like monthly seminars. See details in this post. One application was funded under this program to prototype the workflow, with OBF offering financial support for a seminar series hosted by the Bioinformatics Hub Kenya. Congratulations to Michael Kofia Landi for leading this application and working collaboratively with the BHKi team – Pauline Karega, David Kiragu, Margaret Wanjiku and Festus Nyasimi – and OBF Board including Treasurer Heather Wiencko, to help establish a process for this new type of OBF funding. [Read More]

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. Festus Nyasimi, A co-founder and lead of the Bioinformatics Hub of Kenya Initiative (BHKi), attended the ISMB/BOSC conference 2022, supported by this fellowship granted to him in the first round of 2022. In mid-May, I attended a different conference where I shared my experience with community building in the bioinformatics space with one of the attendees. [Read More]

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]

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]

As previously described, during the November 2021 public Board meeting, the OBF announced two new initiatives to be voted on by the OBF membership. Both of these received a large majority of votes: OBF Community Support Sponsorship (53 for, 3 against, 2 abstaining) OBF Code of Conduct (54 for, 2 against, 1 abstaining) The work to set up the new Community Support Sponsorship is underway. The new Code of Conduct is now available on the OBF website. [Read More]

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. [Read More]

The call for application for the second round of this year’s Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF) Event Fellowship is open. Please submit your application before October 1, 2021 (save a calendar reminder). Just announced: deadline extended to October 4, 2021! Please apply via this Google application form: https://forms.gle/7ocmgvypiFHeFNfy7. The OBF Event Fellowship program is aimed at increasing diverse participation at events promoting open science practices such as open source bioinformatics resource development and dissemination in the biological research community. [Read More]

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. [Read More]

The following outlines a potential new grant programme, subject to approval by the OBF membership in a formal vote, which the OBF board would hope to launch this year. Motivation In 2016, the OBF introduced a “Travel Fellowship” to help individuals attend meetings, aiming to improve diversity in the bioinformatics community. Awardees were reimbursed (with receipts) after the event in which they participated, with a standard cap of USD $1000. The Travel Fellowship was later renamed the “Event Fellowship” reflecting that with the COVID-19 pandemic (and hopefully longer-term changes in scientific conferences to promote the participation of diverse members in online events and reduce carbon emissions), attending events no longer automatically means travelling in person. [Read 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. [Read More]