Looking back at BioSB 2015

BioSB, where bioinformatics meets systems biology

The BioSB research school together with the Utrecht Bioinformatics Center (UBC) organized the BioSB 2015 conference on May 20-21 at Congrescentrum De Werelt in Lunteren. After the NBIC 2014 conference, this 2015 edition was the second conference co-organised by the BioSB research school. The final date of the BioSB 2016, the next edition of this yearly event, will be announced shortly.
 

Photography by Bas van Breukelen

Conference context

The BioSB 2015 combined the annual Netherlands Bioinformatics Conference (NBIC) and the annual Systems Biology Symposium (SB@NL). BioSB 2015 discussed the latest developments in bioinformatics, systems and computational biology and interrelated disciplines, and their wide-ranging applications in life sciences & health, agriculture, food & nutrition and industrial biotechnology.
 

BioSB 2015 conference at a glance

The conference once more proved to be a success with over 320 academic and industrial researchers, programmers and students gathered to get a scientific update on their field of expertise and beyond. Alongside interesting parallel and 'Birds of a Feather' sessions, posters, application demos and awards, several fascinating and revealing keynote speeches provided high level insights.

Some facts & figures

• >320 visitors
• 5 keynote lectures
• 42 lectures
• 12 parallel sessions
• 82 posters
   

Sponsors & co-organisers

We would like to warmly thank our sponsors The Hyve, Genalice, BaseClear, KeyGene and DSM for being the key to the success of the BioSB 2015 conference! Furthermore we would like to express our kind appreciation to the Utrecht Bioinformatics Center (UBC) for their efforts, support and generosity. An overview of the organising and scientific programme committee members can be find at the bottom of this page. 
 

Keynote speakers

Terry Hwa, University of California, San Diego.
Resource allocation and bacterial growth: catabolite repression and metabolic overflow

 

 

 

 

Uwe Bornscheuer, Greifswald Universität, Dept. of Biotechnology & Enzyme Catalysis, Germany and
Henk-Jan Joosten, Bio-Prodict
Protein Engineering using "Small,
but Smart" Mutant Librarie

 

 

Luis Serrano, Centre for Genomic Regulation, Spain
Systems biology analysis and Synthetic biology engineering of a model organism

 

 

 

 

Jill Banfield, University of California, Berkeley
Genome-resolved metagenomic analysis of diversity and function in microbial communities

 

 

 

Paul de Bakker, Medical Genetics, UMC Utrecht
Inherited and de novo variation in human genomes

 

 

 

 

Parallel sessions

The parallel sessions consisted of lectures based on abstract submnission and PI talks by Lodewyk Wessels (Netherlands Cancer Institute), Wigard Kloosterman (UMC Utrecht), Renee de Menezes (VU Medical Center), Richard Scheltema (Utrecht University), Aalt-Jan van Dijk (Wageningen UR), Bas Teusink (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Lude Franke (University Medical Centre Groningen) and Roeland Merks (CWI/UL). Fields that were highlighted during these sessions were:

  Metabolism
Gene regulation
Networks & data integration
Next generation sequencing
Bioinf & SysBio in practice: industrial and medical applications (industry track)
Statistics & modeling
Genotype/phenotype & disease
Proteomics
Whole-cell modeling / multi-scale modeling / genome-scale modeling
Metagenomics topical track
NSBM Spring meeting 2015 (biomolecular modeling track)
 

Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions

The 'Birds of a Feather' sessions consisted of session by the Bioinformatics Industrial User Platform (BIUP), the Young Computational Biologists Netherlands, as well as a session about open source tools for large scale genomics data processing and a walk through the woods of Lunteren. During the BoF sessions meetings the conference audience could also follow the ELIXIR-ISBE session on Challenges of Data Stewardship and a Metagenomics topical track.

The PhD retreat preceded the BioSB 2015 on May 19. Renowned scientists gave career talks and all (PhD) students were invited to give a 5 minute flash presentation about their work followed by dinner and fun social activities in the evening.

Awards

The BioSB Young Investigator Award 2015 was won by Mohammed El-Kebir, Department of Computer Science, Center of Computational Molecular Biology, Brown University. Reconstruction of clonal trees and tumor composition from multi-sample sequencing data

 

 

The Best Lecture prize was won by Bram van Dijk, Utrecht University. Evolution of differential rates of Horizontal Gene Transfer

 

 

 

 

 

The Best Poster prize was won by Saman Amini, University Medical Center Utrecht. Explaining non-responsiveness upon gene deletion

 

 

 

 

 

The Best Demo prize was won by Martina Summer-Kutmon, Maastricht University. Curation, Visualization and Analysis of Biological Pathways

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BioSB research school

The BioSB research school will offer a well-balanced and high quality course portfolio at post-MSc level (PhD students and postdocs), the annual BioSB conference and other community activities. BioSB will be moulded into an attractive membership organisation for systems biologists and bioinformaticians alike.
 

BioSB membership

BioSB is pleased to introduce the BioSB Membership to PhD students and academic researchers at universities or non-profit research institutes. The membership entails substantial reduction (academic researchers) or complete remmision (PhD students) of course fees. In 2015 there is a special BioSB membership fee of 150 euro for researchers and 350 euro for PhDs who attended the BioSB 2015 conference. More information can be found on the BioSB Membership page, for questions or more details please contact education@biosb.nl.

 

Scientific Programme Committee BioSB 2015

• Patrick Kemmeren (chair)
• Bas Teusink
• Bas van Breukelen
• Hans Westerhoff
• Gert Vriend (NSMB)
• Sacha van Hijum (metagenomics)
• Bas Dutilh (metagenomics)
• Barend Mons (ELIXIR/ISBE)
• Vitor Martins dos Santos (ELIXIR/ISBE)

Organising Committee BioSB 2015

• Berend Snel (chair)
• Bas van Breukelen
• Jacintha van Beemen
• Femke Francissen
• Bas Teusink
• Diman van Rossum
• Jeroen de Ridder
• Lodewyk Wessels