APBioNet's annual International Conference on Bioinformatics (InCoB) returns to India in 2018

Abstract

InCoB, one of the largest annual bioinformatics conferences in the Asia-Pacific region since its launch in 2002, returned to New Delhi, India after 12 years, with a conference attendance of 314 delegates. The 2018 conference had sessions on Big Data and Algorithms, Next Generation Sequencing and Omics Science, Structure, Function and Interactions, Disease and Drug Discovery and Plant and Agricultural Bioinformatics. The conference also featured an industry track as well as panel discussions on Women in Bioinformatics and Democratization vs. Quality control in academic publishing. Asia Pacific Bioinformatics Interaction & Networking Society (APbians) was launched as an APBionet Special Interest Group. Of the 52 oral presentations made, 22 were accepted in supplemental issues of BMC Bioinformatics, BMC Genomics or BMC Medical Genomics and are briefly reviewed here. Next year's InCoB will be held in Jakarta, Indonesia from September 10-12, 2019.

Editorial: Curriculum Applications in Microbiology: Bioinformatics in the Classroom

“…Internationally, these short term intensive educational opportunities, putting bioinformatics in the classroom, have proven useful in bringing staff and personnel up to date on the latest technologies and analysis capabilities to increase job performance and institute mission output. The BioCANET network in Central America (Orozco et al, 2013 ), Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) in South America (Pollett et al, 2016 ), H3Africa consortium in Africa (Aron et al, 2017 ; Ahmed et al, 2018 ; Shaffer et al, 2019 ), and APBioNet in Asia (Khan et al, 2013 ; Ahmad et al, 2019 ) are all aimed at increasing capacity for educational and research institutions in the areas of data management, systems administration, biostatistics, genome wide association studies, next generation sequencing analysis, metagenomics, and virology; and all have had success using this educational format. Our topic supports this educational “workshop” format of continued training for professional personnel through a paper by Maljkovic Berry et al , on implementation of a bioinformatics workshop for laboratory and research personnel at a US Department of Defense laboratory located in Kisumu, Kenya.…”