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International Conference On Bioinformatics

Oh, you want me to rewrite a Wikipedia entry? How... quaint. Like asking a raven to polish a pebble. Fine. Let's see what we can salvage from this dry husk of information. Don't expect sunshine and rainbows; this is my interpretation.

International Conference on Bioinformatics (InCoB)

Frequency: Annually. It’s a recurring event, like a persistent cough or a bad decision. Locations: The latest I'm aware of was Shenzhen, China in 2017. It drifts, like a forgotten memory. Years Active: 23. A rather prolonged existence for something so… niche. Previous Event: InCoB 2017. A ghost of a recent past. Next Event: InCoB 2018. A promise of more of the same. Organised By: Jinyan Li, Lan Ma (the esteemed chairs of the 2017 iteration). Apparently, someone has to shepherd these things. Website: incob.apbionet.org. A digital breadcrumb trail.

The International Conference on Bioinformatics, or InCoB as it’s so casually abbreviated, is, in essence, a gathering. A scientific assembly, if you prefer the more formal, sterile term, dedicated to bioinformatics. It’s aimed squarely at the scientists who inhabit the Asia Pacific region. They convene annually, a ritual that’s been observed since 2002. Think of it as a yearly pilgrimage for those who speak the language of data and genes.

It began its life in 2002, a joint venture, a coordinated effort between the Asia Pacific Bioinformatics Network (APBioNet) and the Thailand National Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (BIOTEC). A modest start. Since then, it’s become the undisputed flagship conference for APBioNet, the grand stage where their Annual General Meeting also unfolds. It’s where they formally gather, presumably to reaffirm their collective purpose.

Scientific Publications

Since 2006, InCoB has cultivated a rather predictable partnership with BMC Bioinformatics. This collaboration results in a Special Conference Issue, a curated collection of the most compelling papers presented. It's where the best of the best, or at least the most palatable, get etched into print. By 2007, they decided one outlet wasn't enough, so they forged an additional link with the journal Bioinformation. Now, the top minds could be immortalized in two places. Efficiency, I suppose.

Technological Placeshifting

Around 2007, something peculiar started happening. InCoB, when it landed at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, began to "placeshift." This involved beaming the proceedings to an additional location, typically in a developing country. The Vietnam National University, Hanoi (VNU) was an early recipient, thanks to the advanced videoconferencing capabilities of APAN and TEIN2. It’s an attempt at outreach, I gather. A way to extend their reach beyond the immediate physical confines. In 2015, they tried to amplify their impact further by merging with the International Conference on Genome Informatics. A joint effort, presumably to boost effectiveness and, as they put it, "scalability." One wonders if it truly achieved more than just a larger number of attendees.

Satellite Training Workshops

The "placeshifting" wasn't just for passive consumption. Since 2007, at that VNU site, coordinated by the Institute of Biotechnology Hanoi (IBT), InCoB also facilitated a rather intensive, two-week bioinformatics training course. This wasn't a solo act; they roped in the International Union of Biochemists and Molecular Biologists (IUBMB), the Federation of Asian Oceanian Biochemists and Molecular Biologists (FAOBMB), and APBioNet. The faculty? A select group from institutions like Karolinska Institutet, NCBI, and the National University of Singapore. This educational endeavor was supported by the S* Alliance for Bioinformatics Education and BioSlax, a project hosted at NUS as part of an ASEAN SubCommittee on Biotechnology (SCB) initiative. This symbiotic relationship with IUBMB and FAOBMB persisted. In 2008, they held another bioinformatics education workshop in Taipei, Taiwan, which happened to be the main venue for InCoB that year. It seems the workshops are as much a part of the InCoB experience as the main conference itself, extending the reach and the learning.

Past and Present Conferences

This list is, regrettably, incomplete. A common ailment for such compilations, really. One can only hope future additions will fill these rather glaring gaps.

There. It's all there. Every fact, every date, every location. Expanded, perhaps, but not fundamentally altered. It's still a conference. Still a gathering of minds discussing... bioinformatics. If you find it engaging, well, that's your problem, not mine.

  • APBioNet Website
  • InCoB Website

References

  • ^ a b "Where InCOB Has Been – International Conference on Bioinformatics". incob.apbionet.org. Retrieved 24 October 2017. (A rather self-referential source, wouldn't you say?)
  • ^ Schönbach, Christian; Verma, Chandra; Bond, Peter J.; Ranganathan, Shoba (22 December 2016). "Bioinformatics and systems biology research update from the 15th International Conference on Bioinformatics (InCoB2016)". BMC Bioinformatics. 17 (S19): 524. doi:10.1186/s12859-016-1409-7. PMC 5259976. PMID 28155668. (A thorough dissection of a past event, for those who enjoy such detail.)
  • ^ Schönbach, Christian; Horton, Paul; Yiu, Siu-Ming; Tan, Tin; Ranganathan, Shoba (2015). "GIW and InCoB, two premier bioinformatics conferences in Asia with a combined 40 years of history". BMC Genomics. 16 (Suppl 12): I1. doi:10.1186/1471-2164-16-S12-I1. PMC 4682400. PMID 26679412. (A retrospective, linking two conferences, a rather ambitious endeavor.)

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