Subject: Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing: Education track interest

From: "Steve Thompson: VADMS genetics" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 1995 11:32:22 -0800 (PST)

Dear Colleague -

You might or might not be aware of the Pacific Symposium Biocomputing
conference to be held January 3 to 6, 1996 in Hawaii (see announcement 
after this letter).

Please notice that an effort is being made to organize a session or track on
educational issues, but to do this a proposal will have to be submitted by
March 18.  We are interestesed in organizing this track.  You could help us
greatly in the development of a proposal by providing us with the following
information:

	Name 
	Address
	e-mail address
	courses or workshops you are teaching in the broadly defined field of 
	"biocomputing" and the year such courses or workshops began.

	A brief statement of your willingness to participate in the 1996 
	meeting as one:

	who would submit a paper by early June describing course, workshop or 
	curriculum issues and who would subsequently attend the meeting to
	present the paper if accepted;

	who would plan to attend the meeting, participate in panel discussions,
	software demonstrations, and workshops on educational issues, but who 
	would not submit a paper; 

	who might or might not attend the meeting, but who would be willing 
	to review papers.  

Finally, could you please provide names and addresses of others who might 
be interested in participatingn in the educational session. 

Sincerely -

	A. Keith Dunker				Susan J. Johns
	Department of Biochemistry              Steve Thompson
                                                VADMS Center  

                   Department of BioChemistry & BioPhysics
         Visualization, Analysis & Design in the Molecular Sciences
           Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-1224, USA

 -------------------- attached symposium announcement ----------------------

			  Call For Track Proposals

		     Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing

			   Hawaii - January, 1996

This is an invitation to submit proposals for tracks in the first Pacific
Symposium on Biocompting (PSB), to be held January 3-6, 1996 in Hawaii.  PSB
will bring together top researchers from the US, the Asian Pacific nations
and around the world to exchange research results and address open issues in
all aspects of computational biology.  Replacing and extending the last
three years of Biotechnology Computing Tracks at the Hawaiian International
Conference on System Sciences, PSB will provide a forum for the presentation
of work in databases, algorithms, interfaces, visualization, modelling and
other computational methods, as applied to biological problems, with
emphasis on applications in data-rich areas of molecular biology.  In
addition, PSB intends to attract a more balanced combination of computer
scientists and biologists by reducing some of the barriers to the attendence
of biologists reported by HICSS participants.

The PSB will be organized into specific tracks, to provide focus for the
very broad area of biological computing.  Proposals for such tracks are
hereby solicited.  A track proposal should identify a coherent topic that
can be addressed by 3 to 12 papers.  For example, a track might bring
together papers on alternative approaches to a particular biological
question or it might examine the applications of a particular technology in
a variety of biological areas.  Possible tracks for PSB include, but are not
limited to:

  *  Education and curriculum for computational biology
  *  Advances in molecular visualization
  *  Parallel computation for molecular biology
  *  Emerging technology for genome databases 
  *  New methods for phylogenetic inference

A general track, two invited addresses, live computer demonstrations and a
poster session will round out the schedule.

Responsibilities of a track chair:

As a proposer of an accepted track, you will become the track chair.  The
chair's primary responsibility is to solicit high quality papers for the
track and oversee their review.  You are to solicit manuscripts, have them
refereed, collaborate with the conference chairs in determining which
manuscripts are to be accepted and structure the sessions in your track.

Procedure for submitting proposals:

Track proposals can be as short as a single page and should in no case
be more than 6 pages.  The proposal should:

 * Define a specific technical area to be covered.

 * Justify why the proposed area is appropriate for PSB.  Discuss why the
   topic is timely and important, and how the topic has been addressed in
   other conferences or recent publications.

 * Argue that there is likely to be sufficient high quality, unpublished
   material to fill the track, e.g., a list of researchers you intend to
   solicit for papers.

 * Provide a short autobiographical sketch and an explicit statement that
   your organization endorses your involvement.

We highly encourage the submission of proposals by e-mail.  If sent by
surface mail, send five copies.  The deadlines are:

March 18, 1995   	Proposals Due     

April 5, 1995	 	Notification Regarding the Proposals      

Each proposal will be evaluated by the organizing committee:

    Lloyd Allison, Australia
    Juergen Brickmann, Germany
    Janice Glasgow, Canada
    Lawrence Hunter, USA (co-char)
    Teri Klein, USA (co-chair)
    Toshihisa Takagi, Japan

We look forward to your submissions.  Send proposals to:

Dr. Teri Klein
Computer Graphics Laboratory
University of California, San Francisco
San Francisco, CA 94143-0446

phone: (415) 476-0663
fax: (415) 502-1755
email: [email-masked]