The FORCE11 Scholarly Communications Institute at the University of California, San Diego is a week long summer training course, incorporating intensive coursework, seminar participation, group activities, lectures and hands-on training. Participants will attend courses taught by world-wide leading experts in scholarly communications. Participants will also have the opportunity to discuss the latest trends and gain expertise in new technologies in research flow, new forms of publication, new standards and expectations, and new ways of measuring and demonstrating success that are transforming science and scholarship.
FORCE11 Scholarly Communication Institute (FSCI)
July 30 – August 3, 2018
University of California San Diego (UCSD) UCSD School of Medicine – Medical Education and Telemedicine (MET). La Jolla, CA 92161 USA
Mouse dissociated embryonic kidney cells reforming into a kidney organoid – from the Image Data Resource
In mid-January, I got an email saying I had won the 2018 Biocuration Career Award from the International Society for Biocuration! I was excited to win the award, thrilled to be going to the Biocuration conference in China and wondered what I would say in a presentation about “my career” at the conference.
That week I had just started in a new biocuration position and after hearing about the award, my new colleagues suggested I give a lunchtime talk on my scientific background so that the others in the team could get to know me better. As I worked on a timeline and slides about each of my past biocuration positions, I realized that there actually was a lot that I wanted to say.
I have worked on several different projects over the last 17 years that I would describe as “biocuration.” These jobs have varied greatly. I started curating data in a research position at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, collating information about mouse and human olfactory receptors. Then back in the UK I worked in a more “service” role in the established resources of ArrayExpress and Expression Atlas at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), curating data submissions, talking with submitters and I started to delve into the world of ontologies. More recently I have been the primary curator setting up the metadata processing pipeline for the Image Data Resource at the University of Dundee. This resource was built from scratch, and went where few others have dared to go, creating a robust data repository for complex bioimaging data, with the added value of metadata integration. It has been immensely satisfying to see this project grow both in size and reputation.
Now, after spending a lifetime in academia, I am off on a new adventure working as a Scientific Curator for a company, Genomics England, set up to to provide a genomic medicine service for the UK National Health Service using data from the 100,000 Genomes Project.
My biocuration career has been partly driven by the external forces i.e. what fits with family life and funding opportunities, and partly by my own interests and desire to develop skills. In hindsight each job seems a logical progression from the last, with new experiences, new skills, new technologies (github and conference calling were not around in the early 2000s) and new challenges that have made for a fun and interesting career.
I am very proud to receive the International Society of Biocuration Career Award. It has helped me reflect on my work and recognize that I have had a career and not just a series of jobs! I hope that by sharing my story and the skills I have found to be most useful, I can help others think about their own journeys. It is also wonderful to appreciate the international community of biocurators who meet together to share experiences and recognize the importance of data and biocuration in the sciences. I am looking forward to meeting many of you in Shanghai!
Title: Curating bioimaging data – lessons from the first 40 terabytes
Synopsis: I have experienced three very different types of biocuration work in my career. My first taste of biocuration was in a research lab curating information about olfactory receptor genes. I then moved to work on the well-established functional genomics databases of ArrayExpress and the Expression Atlas at EMBL-EBI curating data submissions submissions. From there I moved to a project at the University of Dundee setting up the Image Data Resource for bioimaging data. This was my biggest curation challenge, starting almost from scratch to develop a method to capture the biomolecular, experimental and analytic annotations associated with images, and to create a pipeline to populate the database. I will describe the most useful biocuration skills I have learnt and some of the challenges I’ve encountered. I will finish by describing my new position, working as a scientific curator in a company performing analyses of the genomes of patients with rare diseases.
The ISB is continually looking to improve and optimise its services for members. To help improve the benefits of your membership we are inviting you to fill in a short survey. In this way, you can tell us what you have observed so far and what you would like to see.
We appreciate your participation to help us ensure that we meet (or surpass) all your expectations.
This survey should take approximately 5 minutes to fill in.
The International Society for Biocuration is pleased to announce Eleanor Williams, from the University of Dundee as the recipient for the Biocuration Career Award in 2018.
Fluorescence microscopy of HeLa cells as curated in the Image Data Resource
The election of the 2017 – 2018 ISB Executive Committee (EC) took place last October. Please join us again in giving a warm welcome to Nicole Vasilevsky and Rama Balakrishnan to the Executive Committee, and congratulating Sylvain Poux for his reelection.
Cecilia Arighi has been elected as the new Chair of ISB, Nicole Vasilevsky is the new Secretary, and Sandra Orchard continues serving as Treasurer for the 2017-2018 period. The Executive Committee is also composed by Suzanna Lewis, Peter McQuilton, Andrew Su, and Zhang Zhang. As always, please reach out to any of us on the ISB EC as your representatives. The official handover date for the new EC took place November 1st.
After many years of service to the Biocuration community as members of the ISB Executive Committee, we bid farewell to Melissa Haendel and Monica Munoz-Torres. We are thankful for their invaluable contributions to the improvement of the International Society for Biocuration.
We again would like to thank all the candidates for their time and effort in running for election, and of course, all the ISB members who voted. Your participation in the society’s activities is greatly appreciated. We would like to also thank this year’s volunteers which oversaw the electoral process:
2017 Nominating Committee: Pascale Gaudet, Stanley Laulederkind, Raja Mazumder, Elvira Mitraka, and Randi Vita.
The International Society for Biocuration (ISB) is happy to announce the 2018 Biocuration award. Next year, the ISB will give the Biocuration career award to a person who has made sustained contributions to the field of biocuration.
Biocuration Career Award
The Biocuration Career Award recognizes biocurators in non-leadership positions who have made sustained contributions to the field of biocuration. The recipient will be required to present a talk at the Biocuration 2018 Conference, with expenses paid by the ISB. The nominations will be reviewed by the ISB Award Committee, comprised of one member of the ISB’s Executive Committee (ISB-EC) and six (6) additional members from the wider biocuration community; these members were nominated by the ISB-EC based on diversity in area of expertise, organization type, role, and geographic location.
Who can nominate and/or be nominated?
Any currently active ISB member may nominate anyone in the field of biocuration, whether the potential nominee is a member of ISB or not.
Members of the ISB can make no more than 1 nomination per award.
Those who hold Principal Investigator or Group Leader positions are not eligible for the Biocuration Career Award.
Current members of the Executive Committee or the ISB Award Committee are not eligible for the awards.
Self-nominations will not be considered.
How to submit your nomination:
Nominations should be sent via email to the award committee at intsocbio@gmail.com with the subject line “Biocuration Award Nominations”.
The nomination email should contain the following fields:
Nominator details (name, e-mail and affiliation, member of ISB);
Nominee details (name, e-mail and affiliation);
Short list of scholarly contributions (a maximum of 50 words);
Brief description of why you are recommending this person (a maximum of 350 words).
The results of the 2017 Elections of the
ISB Executive Committee are in!
Congratulations to Dr. Rama Balakrishnan, Dr. Nicole Vasilevsky, and Dr. Sylvain Poux!
We express our sincere gratitude to all ISB members who participated in this year’s electoral process with your vote. One hundred and four out of 226 eligible ISB members voted in this year’s election; a breakdown of the votes we captured is attached.
Your votes have elected Rama and Nicole as new members, and re-elected Sylvain for a second term in the Executive Committee. Rama and Nicole will fill two open positions when the terms of Monica Munoz-Torres and Melissa Haendel come to completion on 31-October-2017.
Please join us in thanking Moni and Melissa for all their work over the past years!
We would like to also express our sincere gratitude to the rest of the nominated candidates who considered volunteering their time as part of the ISB-EC this year:
Dr. Sirarat Sarntivijai, Dr. Taner Z Sen, and
Dr. Christopher Southan.
We are also very grateful with the following ISB members who volunteered their time for a successful execution of the 2017 EC election:
2017 Nominating Committee: Pascale Gaudet, Stanley Laulederkind, Raja Mazumder, Elvira Mitraka, and Randi Vita.
Elections Officer: Mary Ann Tuli
Membership Officer: Lorna Richardson
Thank you again for participating in the 2017 ISB Electoral Process!
Sincerely,
Your Colleagues at the ISB Executive Committee.
The Executive Committee of the International Society for Biocuration is recruiting a part-time administrator (20 hours / month) to assist with us with a few tasks of paramount importance to all our members.
We are looking for a highly organized, enthusiastic candidate with demonstrated ability to work well independently.
Details and requirements about this exciting opportunity are included below, and a flier is also available here. Please help us spread the word!
Sincerely, Your colleagues at the ISB Executive Committee
Position title: ISB Administrator
Position summary
This position will be responsible for managing and carrying out specific objectives of the International Society for Biocuration (ISB) . This position will report to the Executive Committee (EC) of the ISB.
Responsibilities
– Coordinate communications with ISB members
– Preparation of agenda and minutes of EC meetings
– Project management associated with EC decisions and initiatives
– Generating and soliciting web site content
Basic qualifications
– Bachelor’s degree or 2 years experience in similar position
– Ability to work independently
– Highly organized
– Reliable access to high speed internet for videoconferencing
Preferred qualifications
– Experience in communications, project management and outreach for supporting scientific societies
– Background in life sciences, bioinformatics, and/or data science
– Experience with WordPress
Position details
– Part-time: 20 hours / month
– Pay: commensurate with experience
– Location: Work remotely from anywhere
To apply for this position, please send your resume and cover letter, including the names of two professional references, to intsocbio@gmail.com with the subject line “ISB Administrator.” All applications received by 2017-10-27 will be given full consideration, and applications will be accepted until the position is filed.
International Society for Biocuration member rates of £640.00/$1,280.00/€960.00 for Database are now available in Author Services.
ISB members can validate their eligibility for these discounted
society member rates in the Article Charges page in ‘Author Services’ by inserting the email address associated with their active ISB membership into the box labeled as ‘membership number’.
The Executive Committee of the International Society for Biocuration would like to once again invite tenders to host the 12th International Biocuration Conference during the Northern Spring or Summer of 2019.
Individuals and organizations interested in applying may do so by sending a proposal to the ISB Executive Committee (intsocbio@gmail.com) on or before August 31, 2017.
The successful bidder will be notified by October 1, 2017. The ISB Executive Committee will publicly announce the selected organization or individuals during the 11th International Biocuration Conference, to be held in Shanghai, China in April, 2018.
Format:
Proposals should be short; length should not exceed one side of an A4 or US letter size sheet, using 11 point font.
The proposal should contain:
The name and institution of the local organizer
Details of the proposed venue for up to 350 participants
The range of dates available for the conference
A brief outline of a strategic plan to attract a broad range of participants from the Biocuration community
As fair gender representation is positively encouraged by the ISB; we would also like to know how the applicant intends to promote this.
In a continued effort to bring our meeting to curators in all geographic regions, we strongly encourage ISB members to put forward proposals to bring the ISB meeting to your region once again, or for the first time! Based on ISB meeting region rotation, for ISB 2019 we are encouraging a European location, but will also consider other locations.
