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ISMB 2008 at Metro Toronto Convention Center

An invitation to attend press conference July 21, 2:30 p.m.

Scientists from around the world working at the intersection of computer science and biology – that is, in the discipline of bioinformatics, or computational biology – will assemble in Toronto in mid-July, when the sixteenth annual international conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB www.iscb.org/ismb2008) will be held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, South Building. For six days, the city will host as many as 1600 of the most highly accomplished researchers in areas ranging from the intricacies of molecular evolution and the processes through which proteins fold to the application of computational biology in the design of drugs against bacterial infections and cancer. This is the premier annual meeting in the field of computational biology, organized by the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB www.iscb.org), and includes eight keynote addresses (www.iscb.org/ismb2008/keynotes.php) from the most sought after and innovative research leaders of the field, including the two major ISCB award winners for 2008 (www.iscb.org/2008_awards), and over 160 additional presentations selected as the best results and brightest innovations from among some 600 submissions.

At a press conference to be held on Monday, July 21 at 2:30 p.m., local Toronto steering committee member Shoshana Wodak of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto (www.wodaklab.org) will be joined by keynote speaker Gene Myers of Howard Hughes Medical Institute Janelia Farm Research Campus (www.hhmi.org/research/groupleaders/myers.html), ISCB 2008 Overton Prize winner Aviv Regev of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard (www.broad.mit.edu/about/bios/bio-regev.html), as well as conference chair Burkhard Rost of Columbia University (http://cubic.bioc.columbia.edu/people/rost.php), and conference co-chairs Jill Mesirov of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard (www.broad.mit.edu/about/bios/bio-mesirov.html), and Michal Linial of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (www.ls.huji.ac.il/~michall). The focus of the press conference is to present highlights of the keynote lectures and to describe the stimulating range of science being presented at the conference as a whole. Summaries of featured ground-breaking research presented at the meeting will be made available and interviews may be requested in advance with any of the keynote speakers, scientific presenters or conference organizers, including ISMB 2008 Honorary Chair Thomas Hudson of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (www.oicr.on.ca/research/hudson.htm), who is leading a team in the organization of a special session on Health and Diseases in our Genomes: Mining Genetic Variation. All science and medical writers receiving this release are invited to attend this press conference; if you wish to attend and/or arrange an interview, please send your request by email to the named media contact. All others are invited to register for the conference.

Attendee registration remains open online at www.iscb.org/ismb2008/registration.php through July 12, and on-site registration opens July 18, 2008.

A complete press release that includes a brief biography of each co-chair, keynote speaker and award winner, as well as additional details on each of the parallel session tracks can be found at www.iscb.org/ismb2008/pressrelease.

About the ISCB

The International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) is a scholarly society dedicated to advancing the scientific understanding of living systems through computation. Founded in 1997, the ISCB today serves a global membership of more than 2500 scientists in over 50 countries with the goal of an increased understanding of the significance of bioinformatics in the scientific community, government, and the public at large. More at: www.iscb.org/.

About the ISMB Conferences

The conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) began in 1993 and served as the driving force for the founding of the ISCB in 1997, which has been organizing this conference ever since. ISCB is the only society representing computational biology on a worldwide scale and its flagship conference, ISMB, has become the largest annual academic conference on computational biology worldwide. More about past and future ISMB conferences at: www.iscb.org/ismb.

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