Community

BioJava is organizing a design competition to come up with a new logo. Anybody can participate: The logo should look modern and be better than the current one (yellow circle) The logo should be able to be rendered as a favicon, as well as large (e.g. on a t-shirt). Designs that come in two (or multiple) sizes are ok. Logos shall not look similar in any way to the trademarked Java programming language logo. [Read More]

The first round of the Open Bioinformatics Foundation travel fellowship program has granted funds to three open source bioinformatics software developers to help them attend the Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC) 2016 in Orlando, Florida, this July. The travel fellowship program ( announced 1 May 2016) aims to increase diverse participation at events promoting open source bioinformatics software development and open science in the biological research community. Applications for the first round in 2016 were due on April 15, with two more due dates this year on August 15 and December 15. [Read More]

The Open Bioinformatics Foundation is participating in the Google Summer of Code 2016 program, and last Friday the selected students were announced. Congratulations to all of you, and welcome. I also want to use this opportunity to thank all students who applied. Resources are limited and your proposals did not make it easy to select our finalists. We wish you all the best for your future endeavours, and hope to be able to work with you in future. [Read More]

The Open Bioinformatics Foundation is pleased to announce a gift of USD 18,125 from the Phyloinformatics Summer of Code toward the OBF travel fellowship program. The program, announced earlier this year on March 1, aims to increase diverse participation at events promoting open source bioinformatics software development and open science in the biological research community. The program includes but is not limited to the annual Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC), OBF’s flagship event. [Read More]

The Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC) is a two day meeting focused on open source bioinformatics. We aim to encourage and support a friendly, open and productive community that helps us work together to answer hard biological questions. We’ll get together this summer, July 8-9, in Orlando, Florida. Abstracts for BOSC 2016 talks and posters are due this Friday, April 1st. We want to hear about your research and encourage everyone to submit an abstract. [Read More]

We’re delighted to announce the keynote speakers for the Bioinformatics Open Source Conference, BOSC 2016: Jennifer Gardy Dr. Jennifer Gardy is both a scientist and science communicator. She holds a PhD in Bioinformatics, and is an Assistant Professor of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia and a Senior Scientist at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC). At the BCCDC, she pioneered a new way of investigating outbreaks of infectious diseases – “genomic epidemiology”, which uses a pathogen’s genome sequence as a tool for understanding how an infectious disease spreads. [Read More]

We are very pleased to announce our new Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF) Travel Fellowship program. The program is designed to enable people, whether long-standing members of our community or newcomers, to participate in eligible events for which costs would otherwise be prohibitive. This includes our annual Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC). Although not limited to specific groups of people, the program constitutes another major step for us in our ongoing efforts to increase the diversity in our communities in particular, and in the open source / open science bioinformatics community in general. [Read More]

Call for Abstracts for the 17th Annual Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC 2016), a Special Interest Group (SIG) of ISMB 2016. Dates: July 8-9, 2016 Location: Orlando, FL Web site: /wiki/BOSC_2016 Email: bosc@open-bio.org BOSC announcements mailing list: http://lists.open-bio.org/mailman/listinfo/bosc-announce Twitter: @OBF_BOSC and @OBF_News Important Dates: Call for one-page abstracts opens: March 1, 2016 Abstract submission deadline: April 1, 2016 - extended to Monday 4 April 2016 Travel fellowship application deadline: April 15, 2016 Authors notified: May 6, 2016 Codefest 2016: July 6-7, 2016, Orlando, FL (confirming venue) BOSC 2016: July 8-9, 2016, Orlando, FL ISMB 2016: July 8-12, 2016, Orlando, FL The Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC) is run as a two-day meeting before the annual ISMB conference. [Read More]

The Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF) is pleased to announce that we’ve finally entered the 21st century and upgraded our membership form from paper (yep!) to an online form. Membership in the OBF is free, and is open to anyone who has attended BOSC or can otherwise demonstrate commitment to OBF’s goals. The information you enter on the form, including your email address, will be treated confidentially - we are in the business of promoting open source and open science, not in selling email addresses. [Read More]

Every year, BOSC includes a panel discussion that offers all attendees the chance to engage in conversation with the panelists and each other. Two months ago we announced the theme of the BOSC 2015 panel would be " Open Source, Open Door: increasing diversity in the bioinformatics open source community". Our complete list of panellists is: Panel chair Mónica Muñoz-Torres ( @monimunozto) is the lead biocurator at Berkeley Bioinformatics Open-Source Projects (BBOP). [Read More]