conference report (draft)

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Conference Report for GIW/ISCB-Asia 2014

The 25th Anniversary GIW International Conference on Genome Informatics

& the 4th International Society for Computational Biology Asia Conference

Plaza Heisei, Tokyo, Japan, December 15 – 17

 

Host Organizations:

Japanese Society for Bioinformatics (JSBi)

International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB)

 

Conference Committee:

Conference Co-chairs:

Kiyoshi Asai, the University of Tokyo, Japan. & President JSBi.

Paul Horton, Computational Biology Research Center, AIST, Japan.

 

Program Committee Co-chairs:

Tetsuo Shibuya, the University of Tokyo, Japan.

Chuan Yi Tang, National Tsing Hua University (NTHU), Taiwan.

 

Steering Committee Members:

The Conference Co-chairs plus

Burkhard Rost, Technical University of Munich, Germany & President, ISCB.

Christine Orengo, University College London, UK & Vice President, ISCB.

Diane E. Kovats, Excecutive Officer, ISCB.

 

JSBi Staff:

Hiroko Sakai, Computational Biology Research Center, AIST, Japan.

 

Conference Website: http://www.jsbi.org/giw2014/

 

Conference Overview:

As one of the longest running annual conferences in bioinformatics or computational biology GIW has played an important role in the development of the bioinformatics community in the Asia-Pacific region since its establishment in 1990, adoption of the English language in 1993, and adoption of international site selection in 2006.   Now solidly established as an international conference, GIW revisited its birthplace, Tokyo, for 2014.

2014 was an exceptionally exciting year for as the first time for GIW to be was held jointly with the International Society for Computational Biology, as GIW/ISCB-Asia 2014, building on three previous years of ISCB-Asia.

This year we received 86 high-quality submissions from numerous countries covering various fields of bioinformatics.  We selected 35 proceedings track presentations at the conference most of which have been published in conference associated special issues of BMC Genomics, BMC Systems Biology, IEEE/ACM Transactions of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, and the Journal of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, and in addition a few selected papers will be published in Bioinformatics.  We also had a nine Highlights track presentations selected from 18 submissions.  Moreover we were fortunate to have six world leading researchers give keynotes at the conference: Janet Kelso, Alfonso Valencia, Thomas Lengauer, Shinya Kuroda, Masami Yokota Hirai and Limsoon Wong.  Finally we had approximately 100 poster presentations (including walk ons).

The conference format was unusual in allotting a long lunch time in the first two days to facilitate networking among participants and exploit the “Odaiba” waterfront location which is a tourist destination of sorts.  The mechanics of the conference went smoothly and by and large the delegates appeared happy.

 

 

Registration Details:

Conference: 264  Delegates (Projected: 250~300)

Registration by area:

– Ac/Gov/Non-Profit         121 (member      57%)

– Industry             31        (member           26%)

– Postdoc             43 (member        49%)

– Student             69 (member        49%)

 

Including: 12 On-site registrations, 10 paid but did not attend, 6 Keynote speakers, 2 ISCB executives, 17 sponsors, 11 exhibitors

Gender: Female: 44, Male: 196, Not asked: 24 (via JSBi registration form).

264 Delegates from 25 Countries:

Japan 160; Taiwan 25, United States 16, Korea 13, Germany 8, Saudi Arabia 5, Nigera 4, Spain 4; three each from: Singapore, China, Poland and Denmark, two each from Thailand and the United Arab Emirates, and one each from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Malaysia, India, Australia, Qatar, Egypt, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Columbia.  Two delegates did not state their citizenship.

 

Proceedings Track Details:

Full Papers: 35 out of 86 accepted (41%)

* 3 for Bioinformatics

* 10 for BMC Genomics

* 9 for BMC Systems Biology

* 4 for IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology

* 9 for the Journal of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology

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