NSF Student Travel Grant for 2018 Computational Modeling in Biology Network (COMBINE) Forum

University Of Utah, Salt Lake City UT

Investigators

Abstract

Standards for data exchange are critical to the development of any field. They enable researchers and practitioners to exchange information reliably, apply a variety of tools to their problems, and reproduce scientific results. The COmputational MOdeling in Biology NEtwork (COMBINE) was created in 2010 to organize standardization efforts for systems biology. This effort includes, among others, the systems biology markup language (SBML) for mathematical models created by systems biologists; and the synthetic biology open language (SBOL) for describing genetic designs created by synthetic biologists. While systems biology and synthetic biology have many unique requirements, there are also a lot of overlapping features such as the need to construct mathematical models, describe pathways, and provide visual representations. The COMBINE meetings bring together representatives from both fields to enable these communities to share existing standards, software, and other infrastructure. This project will help enable US-based students from these two communities, particularly those new to these efforts or from underrepresented groups, to meet together at the 2018 COMBINE Forum to be held at Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts on October 8th to 12th (http://co.mbine.org/events/COMBINE_2018). Workshops like this one are instrumental in making progress in the development of these standards. Currently, most standardization efforts are either unfunded or only have very limited support. Indeed, the success of these standards has been due to the donation of time from many individuals to participate in discussions, write specifications, serve as standard editors, and attend workshops. Many of these individuals working on the development of these standards are students based in the US who would otherwise find it difficult to find the funds to attend this meeting. Therefore, this project would help support travel expenses for these US-based students working on these standards to travel to Boston for COMBINE 2018. Not only would this be a valuable experience for these students, but it would also greatly enhance the synthetic biology community's goal of bringing together researchers in synthetic biology with those working in systems biology leading to integrated standards and shared software and infrastructure. The goals of this workshop will be to continue to (1) develop synergistic relationships between systems and synthetic biology researchers; (2) provide a tighter integration of standard development for systems and synthetic biology; (3) perform outreach to modelers and experimentalists; and (4) discuss a coordinated effort to advocate the use of standards in publications and archival databases to enhance reproducibility of scientific results. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.