Building the future of bioinformatics through student-facilitated conferencing.
Sharing results, techniques, and challenges is paramount to advance our understanding of any field of science. In the scientific community this exchange of ideas is mainly made possible through national and international conferences. Scientists have the opportunity to showcase their work, receive feedback, and improve their presentation skills. However, conferences can be large and intimidating for young researchers. In addition, for many of the more prestigious conferences, the very high number of submissions and low selection rate are major limitations to aspiring young researchers aiming to present their work to the scientific community. To improve student participation and proliferation of information, regional student groups have successfully organized conferences and symposia specifically aimed at students. This gives more students the opportunity to present their work and receive valuable experience and insight from peers and leaders in the field. At the same time, it is an ideal way for students to gain familiarity with the conference experience. In this paper, we highlight some of the benefits of participating in such student conferences, and we review the challenges we have encountered when organizing them. Both topics are illustrated in detail with examples from different ISCB Student Council Regional Student Groups.
South African National Bioinformatics Institute, University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa.
Kavisha
K
Ramdayal
Bioinformatics Laboratory, Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands ; Netherlands Bioinformatics Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Miranda D
MD
Stobbe
Bioinformatics Division, School of Bio Sciences and Technology, VIT University, Vellore, India.
Tarun
T
Mishra
Computational Cancer Biology, The Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Magali
M
Michaut
D003142:Communication; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000193:education* / Q000379:methods*; D003226:Congresses as Topic; D006801:Humans; D012958:Societies, Scientific; D013334:Students