Sponsorships from companies and non-profit organizations help to defray some of our costs and enable us to provide free registration for some conference participants, offer honorariums to keynote speakers, and cover other expenses.
BOSC 2026, the 27th annual Bioinformatics Open Source Conference, will take place July 14-15 in Washington, DC, as part of ISMB 2026. We will again join forces with Bio-Ontologies and Knowledge Representation (BOKR) for half a day. We hope you will join us in person or online!
Since 2000, BOSC has covered all aspects of open source bioinformatics and open science. BOSC 2025 took place July 21-22, 2025 in Liverpool, UK (as part of ISMB/ECCB 2025). Read our BOSC 2025 report on F1000Research! BOSC 2025 included two days of keynote talks, talks from submitted abstracts, a panel discussion on data sustainability, and posters. It also featured a joint session with the Bio-Ontologies and Knowledge Representation (BOKR), which opened with a joint keynote by Chris Mungall followed by talks on some of our favorite topics, including open data and reusable and reproducible science. The full lineup of BOSC 2025 talks and posters, including links to talk videos, is available on our Schedule page.
[Read More]In the rapidly evolving landscape of bioinformatics, research data is the bedrock of discovery, innovation, and progress. But how secure is this foundation for the future? This panel will examine the critical challenge of Data Sustainability: the proactive and principled approach to ensuring that valuable research data, along with the necessary infrastructure, funding, expertise, and governance, remains findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable (FAIR), and ethically managed throughout its entire life cycle and for future generations. It is about transforming data from a transient output into a durable asset that continues to yield scientific insights and maximize return on investment over decades.
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KEYNOTE: Chris Mungall
Open Knowledge Bases in the Age of Generative AI
KEYNOTE: Christine Orengo
Working together to develop, promote and protect our data resources: Lessons learnt developing CATH and TED
(Keep scrolling to see the full schedule of talks and posters!)
Please see the ISMB/ECCB poster page for more information, including poster abstracts. BOSC posters will be up for both days of BOSC. Each presenter is assigned to present their poster during Session A or B on Monday, July 21, or Tuesday, July 22, respectively.
[Read More]ABSTRACT: The scientific and clinical community relies on the active development of a wide range of interlinked knowledge bases in order to plan experiments, interpret omics data, and to help with the diagnosis and treatment of disease. These knowledge bases make use of expert curation and the use of community ontologies in order to provide accurate and structured information that can be used algorithmically. The advent of generative AI and agentic methods presents fantastic opportunities for accelerating curation, increasing the breadth and depth of coverage. Open knowledge bases also present opportunities to generative AI, in the form of a trusted backbone of knowledge that can mitigate the hallucinations that plague large language models. However, the pace of development of AI, combined with misunderstandings about both strengths and weaknesses, poses significant dangers. In this talk, I will present our recent work on the use of agentic AI to assist with manual knowledge base tasks, particularly those involving complex ontology development and maintenance tasks. I will present a realistic picture of challenges we face, but also strategies to mitigate them, and a path towards a future where agents, curators, and others can work together to leverage and integrate open source tools and data along with the combined knowledge of the scientific community.
[Read More]ISMB CollaborationFest 2025 will be a collaborative work event at which participants work together to contribute code, documentation, training materials, and challenging analysis problems and use cases. If you are interested in learning and contributing in an intensely collaborative environment, then CollaborationFest is for you. Bring your own project ideas or come ready to collaborate with others on their projects!
BOSC has organized CollaborationFests (aka CoFests) every year before or after ISMB since 2010 (see, for example, the 2024 CoFest page.). This year, we are excited to hold CollaborationFest as part of ISMB/ECCB, opening it to all registered ISMB/ECCB participants. The organizers are affiliated with four different COSIs: BOSC, Bio-Ontologies and Knowledge Representation (BOKR), Function COSI, and 3DSIG.
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BOSC 2026 will take place in Washington, DC, as part of ISMB 2026, July 12-16, 2026. We hope you will join us!
Since 2000, BOSC has covered all aspects of open source bioinformatics and open science.
BOSC 2025, the 26th annual Bioinformatics Open Source Conference, took place July 21-22, 2025 in Liverpool, UK (as part of ISMB/ECCB 2025). Read our BOSC 2025 report on F1000Research!
BOSC 2025 included two days of keynote talks, talks from submitted abstracts, a panel discussion, and posters. The full lineup of talks and posters is available on our schedule page. The talk videos are linked from our schedule page as well as on our YouTube channel.
[Read More]We are thrilled to announce the four sponsors of BOSC 2024! Big thanks to these excellent organizations for supporting open source bioinformatics and enabling us to offer free registration to some qualified participants!
Seqera makes complex data analysis accessible at any scale
Gold Sponsor:
Silver Sponsor:
Sponsorships from companies and organizations help to defray some of our costs and enable us to offer registration fee waivers for some conference participants. In 2023, thanks to our sponsors’ generous support, we were able to grant free registration to 15 participants (13 from underrepresented groups) at BOSC 2023, offer honoraria to keynote speakers, and cover other expenses.
[Read More]Tired of locked-away algorithms hindering your research? This panel dives into the exciting world of open-source AI/ML for bioinformatics. Join BOSC in a conversation with renowned experts as they explore the potential of open models to revolutionize the field.
Uncover the advantages:
But is it all sunshine and rainbows?
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Panel: Open Source AI/ML: A Game Changer for Bioinformatics?
(Scroll down more to see the full schedule of talks!)
