ACM BCB 2014: Conference on Bioinformatics and Computational Biology

Rhodes College, Memphis TN

Investigators

Abstract

The Annual ACM International Conference on Bioinformatics and Computational Biology is the premier ACM conference in the areas of bioinformatics, computational biology, and biomedical informatics, and the main flagship conference of the ACM SIGBio. The ACM BCB conference is in its fifth year. The 2014 ACM BCB conference, to be held in Los Angeles, CA September 20-23, 2014, is aimed at providing a better platform to bridge important interdisciplinary research areas in computer science, mathematics, statistics, biology, bioinformatics and biomedicine, and broaden the participation from underrepresented groups. While the development of the synergy of the research on bioinformatics and computational biology has proven to be very difficult, it is particularly challenging for female and minority students. ACM BCB is dedicated to exploring and developing such synergies. ACM BCB 2014 is expected to be a large annual gathering of researchers and students in computer science, computer engineering, applied computing, biology, medicine, biophysical sciences and life sciences. It will assemble a spectrum of affiliated research workshops, keynote and tutorial lectures, and special interest research sessions into a coordinated research meeting. To promote broad participation in this event, we plan to continue in our ?women in bioinformatics? initiative, which was created to recruit and engage young female students and researchers in this interdisciplinary area. In continuing this initiative, we plan to invite a distinguished female scientist as a keynote speaker whose experience and success may inspire many students. The biggest beneficiaries of the conference will be the graduate students. Through their participation at the ACM BCB conference, graduate students will have great opportunities to meet distinguished researchers in the related fields, exchange ideas with other peers and foster more robust interdisciplinary research. Each supported student will participate in the PhD forum which will afford them an opportunity to interact with peers and mentors about their research. The travel supports requested will allow us to provide underrepresented minorities and female students with opportunities to meet the invited distinguished speakers, to present their own research ideas, to discuss any new research problems, and to foster new collaborations within a joint community of computational and biological researchers.