ASU to host MidSouth Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Society Conference; call for papers, posters by faculty, staff, and students in MidSouth

Nov. 17, 2009 -- Arkansas State University will host the seventh annual conference of the MidSouth Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Society (MCBIOS), Friday-Saturday, Feb. 19-20, 2010. The theme is “Bioinformatics: Systems, Biology, Informatics and Computation.” Conference functions will be held in Centennial Hall at the ASU Student Center, 101 North Caraway, Jonesboro.

Dr. Richard Segall, associate professor, Department of Computer and Information Technology, and a board member for MCBIOS IX is serving as the conference local arrangements chairman. The 2009 conference was held at Mississippi State University and the 2011 conference will be held at Texas A & M University, so Dr. Segall says this is a unique opportunity for those local to ASU to participate in this conference.

Early registration is available online at http://www.mcbios.org website until Friday, Feb. 5, 2010, with non-students paying $225 and students $125. After Feb. 5, the regular registration fees are $275 for non-students and $150 for students. Abstract submission is available now online at web address of http://www.mcbios.org/submit_abstract.html .

Keynote speakers include Dr. Elaine Ostrander, head of the Comparative Genetics Section at the National Human Genome Research Institute; Dr. Clayton Naeve, senior vice president and chief information officer at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital; and Dr. Robert Cottingham, leader of the Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Group, Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The conference, which was initiated in 2004, is open to all topics within the areas of computational biology and bioinformatics. A track of applications of computing in biology, intended for practicing biologists who use computerized equipment in their work, will be featured in the conference.

Both non-students and students may submit an abstract for a poster or oral platform presentation, limited to 250 words. These participants are eligible to submit a manuscript for publication in the conference proceedings which will be published in the open-access journal, “BMC Bioinformatics,” http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcbioinformatics/.

The deadline for abstracts for oral presentation is Friday, Jan. 15, 2010, and the deadline for abstracts for poster presentation is Friday, Jan. 22, 2010. Student awards for best posters and oral presentations will be presented Saturday, Feb. 21. For students to receive an award for their presentations, the abstract must have a first author and at least one representative must be present for the awards ceremony. Full papers are tentatively due Wednesday, March 31, 2010.

Technical and panel discussions will be selected based on submissions of abstracts. Topics include sequence analysis, image processing, microarrays analysis, protein structure/function prediction, gene finding, algorithms, genomics, metagenomics, pathway analysis, systems of biology and metabolic/cellular simulations, and applications. Other topics related to bioinformatics are welcome.

For more information about the conference, contact Dr. Segall at (870) 972-3989 or through e-mail at rsegall@astate.edu.

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