The 2017 Australian Bioinformatics & Computational Biology Society (ABACBS) national conference and the Combine Student Symposium were held at the South Australian Health & Medical Research Institute in Adelaide on 13 – 17 November, 2017. The meeting was chaired by EMBL Australia Group Leader David Lynn.
The conference was attended by more than 200 delegates and showcased the cutting edge of research in bioinformatics and computational biology through an excellent program including invited international and national speakers. Topics included: clinical genomics, single-cell genomics, systems/network biology, molecular evolution, personalised medicine and cancer genomics, neurogenomics, natural language processing and animal and plant genomics.
Some of the invited speakers were:
- Prof. Des Higgins – Professor of Bioinformatics and lab head at University College Dublin.
- Prof. Su-In Lee – Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering and the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington.
- Prof. Karin Verspoor – Professor in the University of Melbourne’s Sschool of Computing and Information Systems
- Dr Joseph Powell – Group Leader at Institute for Molecular Bioscience
- Prof. Gavin Huttley – Group Leader at the Australian National University
- Prof. Melanie Bahlo – Division Head at Walter Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research.
A wide range of excellent oral and poster presentations were also selected from more than 100 abstracts submitted and presented at the meeting. The ABACBS conference was followed by several satellite workshops and events on Thursday, 16 November 16 and Friday, 17 November 17, which included a Bioconductor masterclass, the 3rd Asia-Pacific Bioconductor meeting, a workshop on Using Open Science in Bioinformatics Training and a ‘Train-the-Trainer’ workshop.
A MESSAGE FROM THE ORGANISERS:
The organisers of ABACBS 2017 would like to publicly thank the many sponsors who helped make the event possible, including EMBL Australia for their continued generous support of the society and our platinum sponsors – Illumina, Flinders University, Adelaide University, University of South Australia/Centre for Cancer Biology. The ABACBS executive would also like to thank the wonderful organising committee for their hard work, and delegates who contributed to the conference’s great vibe.
Organising Committee:
David Lynn (EMBL Australia Group Leader, SAHMRI/Flinders) – Chair/Conference Convener
David Adelson (Chair of Bioinformatics, University of Adelaide)
Karin Kassahn (Head Technology Advancement Unit, SA Pathology)
Andreas Schreiber (Head of Bioinformatics, Centre for Cancer Biology)
John Williams (JS Davies Research Professor, University of Adelaide)
Mirana Ramialison (Group Leader, Monash) – ABACBS National Conference Co-ordinator
Ute Baumann (Group Leader, Australia Centre for Plant Functional Genomics)
Katherine Pillman (Research Associate, Centre for Cancer Biology)
Atma Ivancevic (PhD Candidate, University of Adelaide)
Steve Pederson (Bioinformatics Hub, University of Adelaide) Klay Saunders (PhD Candidate, University of South Australia) – COMBINE Student Symposium Representative Alan Rubin (Postdoctoral Researcher, WEHI) – Representative of the 2018 organising committee