Anne Niknejad, University of Lausanne and SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics was unanimously selected for the Biocuration Career Award.

AnneNiknejad is an exceptional biocurator who has worked for over 10 years on the development of resources and vocabularies for the description of anatomical ontologies. She is playing a key role in curation of expression data, of anatomical and developmental ontologies, as lead curator for the Bgee project in Marc Robinson-Rechavi’s group in Lausanne. Anne’s contribution to anatomical homology has been essential to provide a large coverage of anatomical homology in a curated and structured manner originally in vHOG and since 2012 directly using Uberon (http://uberon.github.io). Anne combines the capture of knowledge from textbooks of anatomy, development and zoology, with scientific literature which spans evolutionary developmental biology (Evo-Devo), paleontology, systematics, zoology and recently single-cell atlases. By creating the ontology relations of homology, Anne extracts new knowledge from these disparate sources. She also participated in the development of mechanisms to handle the contradictions which emerge from new results or differences in interpretation between reports. This homology annotation work is critical to the future success of Bgee, but also of other projects relying on comparisons between species which map to anatomy, such as the Monarch Initiative. Anne’s knowledge is not limited to anatomy and she contributed to annotations in other resources: she curated lipid structures in SwissLipids (PMID:25943471) and enzyme reactions in Rhea (PMID: 30272209). 

Thank you to the Award Committee:

Meghan Balk
Rigden, Dan
Donna Maglott
Susan Tweedie
Jana Sponarova

It is our great pleasure to announce the recipient of the 2021 Exceptional Contribution to Biocuration Award:

Prof. Amos Bairoch, University of Geneva and SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics. 

Amos created the Swiss-Prot knowledgebase in 1986, which rapidly became the gold standard for proteins in terms of biocuration. Nobody, except Michael Ashburner, contributed more to the biocuration field. Amos was definitively the most accurate and productive biocurator in Swiss-Prot. In 2002, he co-founded UniProt, the universal protein resource, and Swiss-Prot became UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot, the expertly curated section of UniProtKB. UniProt is the reference resource in the field of proteins: it is accessed by hundreds of thousands of users each month and is cited in tens of thousands of publications. UniProt is an Elixir core data resource. In 2009, Amos left UniProt and co-founded NextProt, a knowledge platform on human proteins, which constitutes the reference knowledgebase for human protein annotation in the context of HUPO Human Proteome Project (HPP). Last but not least, he created Cellosaurus, a knowledge resource on cell lines, which attempts to document all cell lines used in biomedical research. Cellosaurus is now considered as the reference for cell lines in biology and is an Elixir core data resource. Amos is also co-founder of the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and of the ExPASy Bioformatics portal. But it is impossible to list all his contributions.

Congratulations to Amos!

Thank you to the Award Committee:

Meghan Balk
Rigden, Dan
Donna Maglott
Susan Tweedie
Jana Sponarova

ISB will provide two travel fellowships (1’500 CHF each) to attend the (BC)2 Conference in Basel. Open to current ISB members.

The International Society for Biocuration is happy to announce the 2021 Biocuration Awards.

In 2021, the ISB will give two different awards to people who have made a significant impact in the field of biocuration. We welcome your nominations!

Description of the awards:

1) Award for Exceptional Contributions to Biocuration
ISB’s Exceptional Contributions Award recognizes a person who is a leader or a pioneer in the field of biocuration, and whose work has been fundamental to the advancement of biocuration.

2) Biocuration Career Award
The Biocuration Career Award recognizes biocurators in non-leadership positions who have made sustained contributions to the field of biocuration. Those who hold Principal Investigator or Group Leader positions are not eligible for the Biocuration Career Award.

Each award recipient will be invited to present a talk at the 2021 International Biocuration Conference, which will be held virtually this year (the dates and details are to be determined).

Nomination process:
Nominations will be reviewed by the 2021 ISB Awards Committee, comprised of one member of the ISB’s Executive Committee (ISB-EC) and six (6) additional members from the wider research 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.

·      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 a nomination:

Nominations should be sent via email to the awards committee at intsocbio@gmail.com with the subject line “Biocuration Awards Nominations”.

The nomination email should contain all the following fields:

·      Nominator details (name, e-mail and affiliation, member of ISB);

·      Nominee details (name, e-mail and affiliation);

·      Type of award nomination (either Exceptional Contributions to Biocuration or Biocuration Career Award);

·      Short list of scholarly contributions (a maximum of 50 words);

·      Brief description of why you are recommending this person (a maximum of 350 words).

Deadline for submitting nominations:  Friday, February 26, 2021

It is our great pleasure to announce the recipient of the 2020 Biocuration Award:

Midori Harris from PomBase, University of Cambridge, UK was unanimously selected for the Biocuration Career Award.

Midori started her career in biocuration at Saccharomyces Genome Database as a curator and Gene Ontology (GO) developer. Her colleague, Val Wood, the PomBase project manager, attributes a large part of the success of GO to Midori’s insight, precision and clarity. Midori currently works for PomBase, which now benefits from her skills in both curation best practice, and in the development of the Fission Yeast Phenotype Ontology (FYPO). Midori is currently collaborating with EBI and Monarch Initiative to integrate FYPO into uPheno which will help to provide much needed generic phenotype terms for describing cell level phenotypes. She also now maintains the Fungal Anatomy Ontology FAO. All of these projects have far reaching benefits across many areas of biocuration and biology.

Thank you to the Award committee:

• Tiffany Callahan, Computational Biology PhD Candidate at University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, USA
• Violeta Ilik, Head Digital Collections and Preservation Systems at Columbia University in the City of New York, USA
• Varsha Khodiyar, Data Curation Manager at Springer Nature, UK
• Michael Livstone, Senior Scientific Data Curator at Bristol-Myers Squibb, USA
• Luana Licata, Scientific Database Curator at University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Italy
• Zhang Zhang, Professor at National Genomics Data Center, China

Congratulations to Midori!

The International Society for Biocuration (ISB) is happy to announce that nominations are now open for the 2020 Biocuration Career Awards. Please note that the Exceptional Contribution award is made biannually and will next be presented in 2021.

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 invited to give a presentation at the Biocuration 2020 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 research community; these members will be 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. 
• Those who hold Principal Investigator or Group Leader positions are not eligible for the Biocuration Career Award.
• Those who hold Principal Investigator or Group Leader positions are intended recipients for the Exceptional Contribution Award.
• Current members of the Executive Committee or the ISB Award Committee are not eligible for this award.
• 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).

Deadline for submitting nominations:  Friday 22-February-2020

The International Society for Biocuration and the 1th International Biocuration Conference invite current ISB members to apply for Travel Fellowships to attend the 2020 conference in Bar Harbor, Maine, USA .

Deadline: February 29, 2020

Details

We are pleased to provide current ISB members with a travel fellowship opportunity. We intend to support up to ten (10) applicants. Students, junior curators, curators from low-income countries, and curators from countries suffering from natural disasters are encouraged to apply. Selections will be prioritized by financial need.

Please note that applying for a fellowship does not guarantee that you will receive funding.

Awards
Each award will be issued as reimbursement for up to CHF $ 1,500 per fellowship depending on the costs of your registration and travel (e.g. hotel, flight, and ground transportation). 

• ISB Travel Fellows must be able to cover their own conference registration fees and travel cost before attending the conference. ISB Travel Fellows will then submit receipts to request a reimbursement from ISB. Save your receipts! 
• A bank transfer for up to CHF $1,500 – depending on your registration and travel costs – will be arranged for ISB Travel Fellows.
• The Biocuration Travel Fellowships Committee will advise you on how to receive these funds as reimbursement at the end of the conference.

Requirements and Procedures
Each applicant for a travel fellowship must satisfy the following conditions:

• The applicant must be an active ISB member. To become a member go here: https://www.biocuration.org/membership/membership-levels/ 
• The applicant should have submitted a poster or oral presentation at the 13th International Biocuration Conference.
• Only the presenting author from a multi-author abstract may apply for a fellowship.
• The applicant must submit an accompanying letter explaining why s/he is requesting travel funds and how s/he envisions that attending the Biocuration Conference will benefit her/his career.
• Application Deadline: application materials should be sent to ISB via email to intsocbio@gmail.com with the subject line ‘Travel Fellowships to Biocuration 2020’ on or before February 29, 2020.

Notification of award will be sent via email by 14 March, 2020 and announced on the ISB website after acceptance of the award.

Applicants should review visa requirements and make all necessary arrangements on their own. 

The International Society for Biocuration is happy to announce the 2019 Biocuration Awards.

In 2019 ISB will give two different awards to people who have made a significant impact in the field of biocuration. We welcome your nominations!

Description of the awards:

1) Award for Exceptional Contributions to Biocuration
ISB’s Exceptional Contributions Award recognizes a person who is a leader or a pioneer in the field of biocuration, and whose work has been fundamental to the advancement of biocuration.

2) Biocuration Career Award
The Biocuration Career Award recognizes biocurators in non-leadership positions who have made sustained contributions to the field of biocuration. Those who hold Principal Investigator or Group Leader positions are not eligible for the Biocuration Career Award.

Each award recipient will be invited to present a talk at the 2019 International Biocuration Conference that will take place in Cambridge (UK) in April (https://www.biocuration2019.org/), with all expenses paid by ISB.

Nomination process:
Nominations will be reviewed by the 2019 ISB Awards Committee, comprised of one member of the ISB’s Executive Committee (ISB-EC) and six (6) additional members from the wider research 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.
• 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 a nomination:

Nominations should be sent via email to the awards committee at intsocbio@gmail.com with the subject line “Biocuration Awards Nominations”.

The nomination email should contain all the following fields:

• Nominator details (name, e-mail and affiliation, member of ISB);
• Nominee details (name, e-mail and affiliation);
• Type of award nomination (either Exceptional Contributions to Biocuration or Biocuration Career Award);
• Short list of scholarly contributions (a maximum of 50 words);
• Brief description of why you are recommending this person (a maximum of 350 words).

Deadline for submitting nominations:  Friday 4-January-2019