Conference

We thank our community for the excellent keynote speaker suggestions for BOSC 2026. The next phase of our selection process invites you to share any concerns about the suitability of the nominated individuals. Our invited speaker selection process and criteria outline the factors we consider when selecting speakers for BOSC 2026, including characteristics that will exclude a speaker.

Please use this anonymous form to submit any concerns, including as much detail as you are comfortable providing, by Friday, January 9th, 2026.

BOSC 2026 is planned for July 14-15, 2026, as part of ISMB 2026 in Washington, DC.

We invite our community to nominate potential keynote speakers who would be of interest to our community. You may submit as many nominations as you wish. The form may be filled out multiple times. Please submit nominations by December 15, 2025.

Why this matters

Keynote talks are always a highlight at BOSC. We traditionally open and close the conference with invited speakers—prominent contributors or emerging leaders whose work resonates with the bioinformatics open-source community.

Whether you attended BOSC 2025 or missed it, you can read about it (with lots of photos!) in our report published in F1000Research.

We are also pleased to announce that videos of the BOSC 2025 talks are now available on our schedule page, as well as on our YouTube channel. Enjoy!

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. Dr Yvonne Joko Walburga, a Post-doc at the University of Cambridge, was awarded an OBF Event Fellowship to attend the African Organisation for Research and Training in Cancer (AORTIC) Cancer Conference.

I initially applied for the OBF Travel Fellowship to attend the African Organisation for Research and Training in Cancer (AORTIC) Genomics Conference, and was accepted, but the timing was too tight. Happily, the board agreed to defer my funding to the next AORTIC Conference in November 2023 instead. So, I could make it for the AORTIC conference in Dakar, Senegal from November 2nd – 6th 2023 with support from the OBF Travel Fellowship and the African Cancer Registry Network.