Call For Papers, Abstracts and Demonstrations

Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing

Kapalua, Maui (Hawaii) - January 4-9, 1998

The third Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing (PSB), will be held January 4-9, 1998 in Maui, Hawaii. PSB will bring together top researchers from North America, the Asian Pacific nations, Europe and around the world to exchange research results and address open issues in all aspects of computational biology. PSB will provide a forum for the presentation of work in databases, algorithms, interfaces, visualization, modeling and other computational methods, as applied to biological problems, with emphasis on applications in data-rich areas of molecular biology. PSB intends to attract a balanced combination of computer scientists and biologists, presenting significant original research, demonstrating computer systems, and facilitating formal and informal discussions on topics of importance to computational biology.

To provide focus for the very broad area of biological computing, PSB is organized into a series of specific sessions. Each session will involve both formal research presentations and open discussion groups. The 1998 PSB sessions are:

Keynote address

Gregory Petsko, of Brandeis University, will deliver the keynote lecture: Structural Biology and Biocomputing: A Marriage Made in Heaven or in the Other Place?

Papers, Abstracts and Demonstrations

The core of the conference consists of rigorously peer-reviewed full-length papers reporting on original work. Accepted papers will be published in a hard-bound archival proceedings, and the best of these will be presented orally to the entire conference. Now that the full paper deadline has passed, researchers wishing to present their research are encouraged to submit a one page abstract, and present their work in poster and demonstration sessions. Abstracts may report on any topic of relevance to the conference participants, and need not fit any of the particular sessions. Workstations and internet connections will be available for demonstrations, and there will be poster sessions scheduled during the conference open to anyone who submits an abstract. Please submit detailed requests for demonstration facilities along with your abstract.

Important dates

Notification of paper acceptance: August 22, 1997
Final paper deadline: September 22, 1997
Abstract deadline: November 1, 1997
Meeting: January 4-9, 1998

Abstract format

Abstracts MUST be submitted electronically by the November 1st deadline to Russ Altman (russ.altman@stanford.edu). Hardcopy abstracts will not be accepted. Email abstracts must be in ASCII format with header information in the following order: Title, Authors, Institution, Mailing Address, Email Addresses, body of abstract. The abstracts should be no longer than 500 words, including header information. There can be no figures in abstracts.

PSB '98 Sessions:

Each session has a chair who is responsible for organizing submissions and a formal discussion. Please contact the specific session chair relevant to your interests for further information.

Gene Expression and Genetic Networks

Cochairs: Barbara Bryant, Aleksandar Milosavljevic & Roland Somogyi

Computational methods in the monitoring, analysis, and modeling of RNA and protein expression; gene regulatory network models and new methods of acquiring and analyzing large-scale gene expression data.

Contact:
Roland Somogyi
Phone: +1 (301) 402-1407
Fax: +1 (301) 402-1565
Email: rolands@helix.nih.gov


Molecules to Maps: Tools for Visualization & Interaction

Cochairs: Tom Ferrin & Eileen Kraemer

Tools and techniques to assist scientists in evaluating, absorbing, navigating, and correlating sequence, structural, and functional data through visualization and user interaction.

Contact:
Eileen Kraemer
Phone: +1 (314) 935-6621
Fax: +1 (314) 935-7302
Email: eileen@cs.wustl.edu


Gene Structure Identification in Large-scale Genomic Sequence

Cochairs: Ying Xu, Edward Uberbacher

Any aspect of computational gene finding, particularly how to fully utilize the available EST/protein sequences and biological information, statistical and mathematical tools to automate gene identification and annotation in large-scale genomic sequences.

Contact:
Ying Xu
Phone: +1 (423) 574-7263
Fax: +1 (423) 574-7860
Email: xyn@@ornl.gov


Molecular Modeling in Drug Design and Biotechnology

Cochairs: Terry Lybrand, Teri Klein, Jurgen Bajorath

State-of-the-art molecular modeling approaches which aid in small molecular and structure-based drug design and protein engineering.

Contact:
Terry Lybrand
Phone: +1 (206) 685-1515
Fax: +1 (206) 616-4387
E-mail: lybrand@proteus.bioeng.washington.edu


Protein Structure Prediction

Chair: Richard Lathrop

All aspects of protein structure prediction, with emphasis on approaches that lead to testable protein structure predictions, and experimental results across a large diverse set of proteins.

Contact:
Richard Lathrop
Phone: +1 (714) 824-4021
Fax: +1 (714) 824-4056
Email: rickl@ics.uci.edu


The Relationship Between Protein Structure and Function:
How Have Proteins Over Time Diverged in Function?

Cochairs: Patricia Babbitt and Monica Riley

Computational strategies to address the "structure-function" problem, particularly the interface between automated structural analysis, evolutionary change and biological insight.

Contact:
Patricia Babbitt
Phone: +1 (415) 476-3784
Fax: +1 (415) 476-0688
email: babbitt@cgl.ucsf.edu


Computing with Biomolecules

Cochairs: Peter Clote, Masami Hagiya, Tom Head

Both artificial and naturally occurring computations in which biological macromolecules act as computational elements.

Contact:
Tom Head
Phone: +1 (607) 777-2278
Fax: +1 (607) 777-2450
Email: Tom@Math.Binghamton.edu


Complexity and Information Theoretic Approaches to Biology

Cochairs: David Dowe and Klaus Prank

Approaches to biological problems using notions of information or complexity, including methods such as Algorithmic Probability, Minimum Message Length and Minimum Description Length. Two possible applications are (e.g.) protein folding and biological information processing.

Contact:
David Dowe
Phone: +61 3 9905-5776
Fax: +61 3 9905-5146
Email: dld@cs.monash.edu.au


Distributed and Intelligent Databases

Cochairs: Dmitrij Frishman and Patrick Argos

Computer and algorithmic methods that result in more intelligent, interconnected and accessible molecular biological databases.

Contact:
Dmitrij Frishman
Phone: +49 (89) 8578-2664
Fax: +49 (89) 8578-2655
Email: frishman@mips.biochem.mpg.de


Building Bioinformation Infrastructure in the Pacific Rim

Cochairs: S. Subbiah, T.W. Tan, Tim Littlejohn, Hideaki Sugawara

Collaboration and cooperation to create a shared biological information infrastructure across the Pacific Rim nations and beyond, that will guarantee a quality of service to the users of our biocomputing and bioinformatics resources. Of particular emphasis in this session is how to transfer the technology to research organizations in developing nations which find difficulty in accessing biocomputing and bioinformatics services.

Contact:
Tin Wee Tan
Phone: +65 772-6490
Fax: +65 872-6205
Email: tinwee@bic.nus.sg


For further information about the conference, registration, possible travel support, submission of papers not covered by the above categories, or other information, please contact the conference coordinator:

Norma Belfer
PSB Conference Coordinator
UCSF Computer Graphics Laboratory
Box 0446
513 Parnassus Avenue
San Francisco, California 94143-0446
USA
email: psb@cgl.ucsf.edu fax: +1 (415) 476-0688
tel: +1 (415) 476-5128

Conference Co-Chairs

Russ Altman, Stanford University
A. Keith Dunker, Washington State University
Lawrence Hunter, National Library of Medicine
Teri Klein, University of California, San Francisco

This page written by Lawrence Hunter, and last updated on August 26, 1997