Call for ISMB-98 Site Proposals
We solicit proposals by potential organizers of the 1998 conference on
Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology.
The purpose of the ISMB conference is to disseminate the latest
developments in computational molecular biology and to stimulate new
work on the application of intelligent computational systems to
problems in molecular biology. ISMB is a multidisciplinary conference
bringing together scientists from computer science, mathematics,
statistics, and molecular biology. The scope extends to any
computational method or system supporting a biological task that is
algorithmically, cognitively or conceptually challenging, involves a
synthesis of heterogeneous information, or exhibits the emergent
properties of an "intelligent system." From a computational
perspective, areas of interest include adaptive systems, intelligent
experimental control, data modeling, machine learning, artificial
intelligence, combinatorics, stochastic optimization, string & graph
algorithms, linguistic methods, and parallel computer
technologies. Biological areas of interest include molecular
structure, genomics, molecular sequence analysis, evolution and
phylogenetics, adaptive experimental systems, and molecular biology
generally. Emphasis is placed on the validation of methods using real
data sets and on practical application in the biological sciences.
The Fourth International Conference on Intelligent Systems for
Molecular Biology will take place at Washington University, St. Louis,
Missouri, USA June 12 to 16, 1996. See WWW URL
http://ibc.wustl.edu/ismb96/ for more information about ISMB-96.
ISMB-97 will be held in Greece in the summer of 1997. Therefore,
consistent with the idea that the location of ISMB will be held
alternately inside and outside North America, the steering committee
will give some (but not absolute) preference to proposals to hold
ISMB-98 in North America.
Proposals should include the following information.
o Organizers (names, affiliations, previous experience of conference
organization, involvement in previous ISMB conferences).
o Proposed venue (conference facilities, lodging, maximum number
of delegates, internet access, transportation, environs)
o Proposed dates (describe potential date conflicts with other
relevant computer-science or molecular-biology conferences, and
perhaps list nearby cultural events)
o Sources from which funding will be solicited (such as for student
travel and registration; some seed money may be available from
previous conferences)
o Fees (estimate registration fees and student housing costs)
o A description of how and where the conference will be publicized
o Significant planned changes to the format of ISMB-98 with respect
to previous ISMB meetings
o The organizers of ISMB-98 will be expected to include an organizer
of a previous ISMB conference, although that person may be chosen
after the proposal is accepted
Proposals should be sent by email to pkarp at ai.sri.com by July 31, 1996.
The ISMB Steering Committee will decide among the proposals, and will
announce its decision by Sept 15, 1996. The Steering Committee is
composed of organizers of past ISMB conferences. Current Steering
Committee members are:
Larry Hunter National Library of Medicine, USA
David Searls SmithKline Beecham, USA
Jude Shavlik University of Wisconsin, USA
Russ Altman Stanford University, USA
Doug Brutlag Stanford University, USA
Peter Karp SRI International, USA
Richard Lathrop University of California at Irvine, USA
Christopher Rawlings SmithKline Beecham, UK
Dominic Clark Glaxo Wellcome, UK
Thomas Lengauer GMD-SCAI, Germany
Shoshana Wodak Universite Libre De Bruxelles, Belgium
Terry Gaasterland Argonne National Laboratory, USA
Randall Smith Baylor College of Medicine, USA
David States Washington University, USA
