Applications

Call for Applications – ECCB 2016 – CALL CLOSED

Application Track chair: Theodore Alexandrov, EMBL

We have invited the submission of abstracts for the Application Track, a new initiative established at ECCB 2016 to promote application of computational biology in industry and other fields beyond academia. The call for applications is now closed.

 

What is the aim of the Applications Track?

The aim of the track is to give a voice to those who apply computational biology in industry, clinics, governmental organizations, and other fields beyond academia. With advanced science and technology finding its ways everywhere, many clinicians, analysts, data scientists have more and more to share with scientists in academia. A plethora of scientists currently works outside of academia, and may not be interested or are sometimes restricted to publish, thus making themselves and their work invisible to the academic community. This track is a platform for presenting such applications, some of which may well be untraditional or otherwise not often heard at academic conferences.

 

Examples of submissions

Examples of submissions that we envision include computational applications, software, services, infrastructure or combinations of these that are developed for beyond-academia applications e.g. for pharmaceutical industry, biotech startups, clinics. Academic developments which do not have yet the beyond-academia component but have clearly outlined potential for it, are also welcome.

 

Don’t we have already applications presented at ECCB and other CB conferences?

Absolutely. Computational biology is by its nature about applying computational tools in biology. The difference of this track from many applied sessions at ECCB is bridge the academia and other applications fields of CB and to cross-disseminate both sides. This is an open track alongside the ELIXIR Applications track which is mainly devoted to the participants of ELIXIR.

 

I’m in academia, can I submit an abstract?

Yes, please do if you feel that A) your applications cross the boundaries of traditional academic science, or B) your developments are directly relevant beyond academia or have potential for it.

 

Application Track: review criteria

A group of experts will select the abstract to be presented at the meeting considering the impact of the work on the field, the likelihood that the work will make a good presentation, and the relevance to aims of the Applications Track (see above). Accepted presenters for the Applications Track are required to deliver the presentation themselves, and must register and pay to attend the conference.

All submissions will be evaluated by a group of Theme Co-Chairs and the submission will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

1. Relevance, interest, and value of the topic to conference attendees,
2. Impact and potential in bridging academia with other fields of applications,
3. “Presentability” of the work to a large, diverse audience,
4. Seniority of the presenting author,
5. Submissions that permit the presentation of related interesting unpublished new results will be reviewed favorably,
6. We aim to balance across the themes and may factor this into the acceptance decisions.

None of the criteria above are “hard”. The ultimate decision of acceptance for a Applications Talk lies with the Program Committee.

Accepted presenters for the Application Track are required to deliver the presentation themselves, and must register and pay to attend the conference.

 

Application Track: themes

New for ECCB 2016 will be the organization of the conference presentations according to five main themes:

theme	details
DATA	Organization, management, categorization, integration, analysis of data, knowledge discovery
GENOME	Sequence analysis, alignment, evolution, phylogeny, genetics, epigenetics, 3D conformation
GENES	Expression, function, regulation, transcription, translation, geno-phenotype
PROTEINS	Structure, function, alterations, assemblies, interactions, design, proteomics
SYSTEMS	Systems biology, pathways, molecular networks, dynamics, signaling, multi-scale modeling

 

Application Track: submission guidelines

The 1000-word full abstract, 150-word short abstract, a graphical abstract figure, and 200-word justification on why this abstract fits into the Applications Track must be submitted through the automated system. Submissions must be made to the easychair Applications Track submission site (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=eccb2016).

For each presenting author only one submission to the Applications Track will be considered. The same limitation applies for the senior author.

Submissions should include the following:

1. Name/affiliation/email of presenting author (note that the presenter cannot be changed because the identity and ability to present of that person will be an essential selection criterion).
2. Names/affiliations/email of all co-authors (note: any name appearing on a published paper has to be added here). Note that all co-authors have to agree to the submission. It is the responsibility of the submitter to guarantee that all co-author email addresses are correct (email notifications of the submission will be sent to all co-authors).
3. Title.
4. 150-word description of the presentation for promotion on conference website and conference app. ^A)
5. 1000-word full abstract. ^A)
6. A graphical abstract figure, note that only PDF files are acceptable. ^B)
7. 200-word justification on why this abstract fits into the Application Track. ^A)

^A) Please note there is no word count available on the EasyChair form, you can use a tool like e.g. https://wordcounter.net. Submissions that succeed the maximum number of words will not be admitted to the review procedure.
^B) Please note that only PDF submissions are acceptable. It is the responsibility of the submitter to verify that the PDF is completely viewable/printable by all major operating systems (LINUX, MacOS, Windows).

Due to the extention of submission deadlines, the notification dates for the applications will shift as well. Acceptance notifications will be sent no later than June 15, 2016. As the acceptance / rejection will be based on a comparison and ranking of all submissions, we will not provide any review report with the acceptance notification.

 

Application Track: contact details

All questions pertaining to the Application Track should be directed to: applications@eccb2016.org