ISMB 2012

ISMB - Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology - is the primary annual meeting of the International Society for Computational Biology. In celebrating our 20th anniversary as the longest running annual bioinformatics/computational biology conference, we are pleased to present the largest and most important bioinformatics conference of 2012.

What makes ISMB so important? Bioinformatics is unequivocally an essential tool for understanding biology. The widespread recognition of bioinformatics has been largely driven by genomic sequence efforts because laboratory scientists recognize that the usefulness of biologic/genomic data is highly dependent on one’s ability to electronically access and manipulate it. Biologists are routinely integrating computational tools and modeling into their research programs to create large predictive models based on information found in databases and other electronic resources. The combined focus on “intelligent systems” and actual biological data makes ISMB a highly relevant meeting by directly addressing these essential tools and research methods. This conference brings together nearly 2,000 scientists from a wide range of disciplines, including: molecular biology; biology; medicine; computer science; mathematics and statistics; and more; for presentation of research that demonstrates both the development of new computational techniques and their application, with significant outcomes to biomedical, agricultural and/or environmental questions. Existing relevant computational techniques include: machine learning; data mining; text analysis; pattern recognition; knowledge representation; databases; data modeling; combinatorics; stochastic modeling; string and graph algorithms; linguistic methods; robotics; constraint satisfaction; data visualization; parallel computation; data integration; modeling, imaging and simulation. The newest of techniques are especially encouraged and featured in this conference. As a multidisciplinary forum for disseminating the latest developments in bioinformatics, the principal focus of ISMB is on the development and application of advanced computational methods for biological problems. More than any other bioinformatics conference, ISMB brings biologists and computational scientists together in the most innovative of sessions and tracks to focus on research centered on actual biological problems rather than simply theoretical calculations.