We are pleased to announce that BOSC and the newly-renamed Bio-Ontologies and Knowledge Representation (BOKR) will join forces for a day at ISMB/ECCB 2025! The joint session will include talks chosen from abstracts submitted to BOSC or BOKR, plus a keynote speaker who is well known in both the ontology and open science communities (stay tuned for an announcement soon!).

CollaborationFest 2025 will be a two-day collaborative work event at which participants work together to contribute code, documentation, training materials, and challenging analysis problems and use cases. Bring your own project ideas or come ready to collaborate with others on their projects!

BOSC has held CollaborationFests (aka CoFests) every year before or after ISMB since 2010. This year, we decided to hold the CollaborationFest as part of ISMB/ECCB and open it to all registered ISMB/ECCB participants. It will take place during the last two days of ISMB/ECCB.

Over the past few weeks, we have been working behind the scenes to migrate our website, resulting in the page that you currently have in front of you! Our pages are now generated by the Go-based, open source static site generator Hugo, and are stored on GitHub. All old URLs should continue working as before, but if you run into any missing pages or other issues, please let us know by submitting an issue or contacting us via the channels linked in the page footer.

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.)

We invited our community to nominate potential keynote speakers for BOSC, and we were delighted with the many excellent suggestions received. In the next stage of this process, we’re providing you with an opportunity to express any concerns regarding the suitability of any nominated individuals as BOSC Keynote Speakers.

Our invited speaker selection process and criteria include examples of potential reasons for exclusion. If you have concerns about any of the individuals on our list, please share them (with as much detail as you feel comfortable providing) through this anonymous form by Friday, January 24, 2025.

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

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. Jacqueline Wahura Waweru, a PhD researcher at the University of Cape Town and International Center of Insect Physiology and Ecology, was awarded an OBF Event Fellowship to attend the annual Royal Entomological Society Conference (Ento24).

I was privileged to virtually attend the annual Royal Entomological Society conference Ento24 ( Ento24: In-person - Royal Entomological Society), which took place on 10th to 12th September at the University of Liverpool, UK. The theme of the conference was insect science. Diverse speakers spanning various sub-themes, including pest and natural enemies, host microbiome interactions, genetics and genomics, vector surveillance and control, among others were present. This being the first broad range insect conference that I have ever attended, the diversity in the range of sub-themes covered at the conference made me fully appreciate the diversity in research and interests in the various insect species being presented. Each speaker was eligible to give a 15-minute presentation on their work.

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. Erin (Rin) Krichilsky, a PhD researcher at Columbia University and the American Museum of Natural History, was awarded an OBF Event Fellowship to attend the 27th International Congress of Entomology (ICE2024 Kyoto).

This year, I had the privilege to co-host the symposium “Bee diversity in East and Southeast Asia: Systematics and Status of the Fauna” at the International Congress of Entomology (ICE) in Kyoto, Japan. The symposium hosted eight researchers from Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, China, Singapore, Thailand, and Nepal working in universities and government institutions. Each researcher gave a 15-minute presentation about bee studies in their region. Open data was a central theme, as many novel findings are discovered through DiscoverLife and the community science platform iNaturalist, and project results are posted to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

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. Masturina Binti Md Mansor, a PhD student at the Universiti Putra Malaysia, was awarded an OBF Event Fellowship to attend Asia & Pacific Bioinformatics Joint Congress 2024.

I flew in to Okinawa, Japan, from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 21st October 2024 for the first ever Asia Pacific Bioinformatics Joint Conference 2024 (APBJC). It was my first international conference as a PhD candidate, a memorable milestone that I will cherish as I push forth in my research journey. This APBJC was successfully brought together by the big houses of bioinformatics in the region, namely the Japanese Society for Bioinformatics (JSBi), the Asia-Pacific Bioinformatics Network (APBioNET), the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB), the Genome Informatics Workshop (GIW), and the Asia-Pacific Bioinformatics Conference (APBC). Digital advertisements flashed through the streets of Kokusai Dori in Naha in anticipation of the 4-day event (22nd October - 25th October) as the city welcomed around 700 participants from all around the world, bringing together researchers, scientists, academicians, industry players and other science/tech enthusiasts alike. The conference took place at the Naha Cultural Arts Theatre (NAHart), off the main street of Kokusai Dori.

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. Tanakamol Mahawan, a PhD student at the Institute of Systems, Molecular and Integrative Biology , University of Liverpool, was awarded an OBF Event Fellowship to attend Asia & Pacific Bioinformatics Joint Congress 2024.

This year’s Asia & Pacific Bioinformatics Joint Conference (APBJC 2024) in Okinawa was a special milestone for me; it was the first conference I attended since moving back to Thailand from the UK. Now a new lecturer at a Thai university, I felt a unique excitement and gratitude stepping into this event, thrilled by the chance to reconnect with the vibrant bioinformatics community in Asia Pacific and meet others passionate about advancing open science.