Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing

Stanford University, Stanford CA

Investigators

Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract The Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing (PSB) is multidisciplinary conference covering current research in the theory and practice of computational methods as applied to significant biological problems. PSB 2025 – 2030 will be the 30th to 35th meeting of this series. Each February, individuals from the scientific community propose sessions and workshops for the PSB meeting to be held the following January. In the face of stiff competition, 5 to 6 sessions and 4 to 6 workshops are chosen. These sessions and workshops are often organized by junior scientists who are developing new research areas. Thus, PSB provides early opportunities for serious examination of emerging research areas. PSB also provides junior scientists the opportunity to gain a significant career boost by this activity. Our goals are for sessions to cover emerging areas and for workshops to bring attention to very newest developments. This bottom-up, crowdsourcing approach has worked well to reveal the newest developments in the diverse topics in biocomputing. At the meeting, session organizers present a short introduction to the session usually followed by a high-profile speaker, typically a biologist, who provides an overview highlighting the importance of the research area. Next, 4 to 10 oral presentations (based on the number of accepted papers) are delivered. Submitted papers are rigorously peer-reviewed, with typically ≤ 30% being accepted. These peer-reviewed papers are published in the annual PSB proceedings (viewed as a journal by PubMed), are open access, and indexed by PubMed. Additionally, the meeting has 4 to 6 workshops, two keynote speakers (scientific and ELSI), four invited speakers, and a continuously running poster session. The poster session is one aspect of the conference that provides junior scientists with opportunities to network with prominent scientists in the field. PSB has historically been held in Hawaii and the conference venue creates many opportunities for organic networking/collaborative discussions to arise. PSB has continually improved from participant feedback; specific examples of this improvement will be provided. The PSB meeting is highly regarded. PSB continues to foster the development of computational biology and bioinformatics by providing important, critical exposure to emerging areas and thus deserves continued support.