AIMS:

AlCoB aims at promoting and displaying excellent research using string and graph algorithms and combinatorial optimization to deal with problems in biological sequence analysis, genome rearrangement, phylogeny reconstruction, and structure prediction.

AlCoB 2020 & 2021 will merge the scheduled program for AlCoB 2020, which could not take place because of the Covid-19 crisis, with a new series of papers submitted on this occasion.

Previous events were held in Tarragona, Mexico City, Trujillo (Spain), Aveiro, Hong Kong and Berkeley.

The conference will address several of the current challenges in computational biology, with topics including:

1) assembling sequence reads into a complete genome,
2) identifying gene structures in the genome,
3) recognizing regulatory motifs,
4) aligning nucleotides and comparing genomes,
5) reconstructing regulatory networks of genes, and
6) inferring the evolutionary phylogeny of species.

Special focus will be put on methodology and significant room will be reserved for scholars at the beginning of their career.

VENUE:

AlCoB 2020 & 2021 will take place in Missoula, Montana, a college town located in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, near Glacier National Park and Yellowstone National Park. The meeting will be hosted in the University Center, a few hundred feet from the base of Mount Sentinel.

SCOPE:

Topics of either theoretical or applied interest include, but are not limited to:

Sequence analysis
Sequence alignment
Sequence assembly
Genome rearrangement
Regulatory motif finding
Phylogeny reconstruction
Phylogeny comparison
Structure prediction
Compressive genomics
Proteomics: molecular pathways, interaction networks, mass spectrometry analysis
Transcriptomics: splicing variants, isoform inference and quantification, differential analysis
Next-generation sequencing: population genomics, metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, epigenomics
Genome CD architecture
Microbiome analysis
Cancer computational biology
Systems biology

STRUCTURE:

AlCoB 2020 & 2021 will consist of:

invited lectures
peer-reviewed contributions
posters

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:

Terry Gaasterland (University of California, San Diego), Genetic Risk of Disease through Genome Variation and Regulation of Transcription

Christine Orengo (University College London), Algorithms for Mining Massive Metagenome Repositories to Detect Novel Enzymes

Tamar Schlick (New York University), Folding Genes at Nucleosome Resolution

PROGRAM COMMITTEE: (to be completed)

Ludmil Alexandrov (University of California, San Diego, US)
Mani Arumugam (University of Copenhagen, DK)
Bonnie Berger (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US)
Chao Cheng (Baylor College of Medicine, US)
Colin Dewey (University of Wisconsin, Madison, US)
Joe Felsenstein (University of Washington, US)
Pedro G. Ferreira (University of Porto, PT)
Martin Frith (University of Tokyo, JP)
Debashis Ghosh (University of Colorado, US)
Michael Gribskov (Purdue University, US)
Michael Hawrylycz (Allen Institute for Brain Science, US)
Daniel Huson (University of Tübingen, DE)
Miriam Konkel (Clemson University, US)
Maria-Jesus Martin (European Bioinformatics Institute, UK)
Carlos Martín-Vide (Rovira i Virgili University, ES, chair)
David H. Mathews (University of Rochester, US)
Aaron McKenna (Dartmouth College, US)
Ryan E. Mills (University of Michigan, US)
Burkhard Morgenstern (University of Göttingen, DE)
Joel S. Parker (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, US)
Kay Prüfer (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, DE)
Knut Reinert (Free University of Berlin, DE)
Walter L. Ruzzo (University of Washington, US)
Russell Schwartz (Carnegie Mellon University, US)
Gordon Smyth (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, AU)
Peter F. Stadler (Leipzig University, DE)
Alfonso Valencia (Barcelona Supercomputing Center, ES)
Fabio Vandin (University of Padua, IT)
Matthew T. Weirauch (Cincinnati Children's Hospital, US)
Travis Wheeler (University of Montana, US)
Zohar Yakhini (Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, IL)
Shibu Yooseph (University of Central Florida, US)

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:

Sara Morales (Brussels)
Manuel Parra-Royón (Granada)
David Silva (London, co-chair)
Miguel A. Vega-Rodríguez (Cáceres)
Travis Wheeler (Missoula, co-chair)

SUBMISSIONS:

Authors are invited to submit non-anonymized papers in English presenting original and unpublished research. Papers should not exceed 12 single-spaced pages (all included) and should be prepared according to the standard format for Springer Verlag's LNCS series (see http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0).

Upload submissions to:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=alcob20202021

PUBLICATIONS:

A volume of proceedings published by Springer in the LNCS/LNBI series will be available by the time of the conference.

A special issue of IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (2019 JCR impact factor: 2.85) will be later published containing peer-reviewed substantially extended versions of some of the papers contributed to the conference. Submissions to it will be by invitation.

REGISTRATION:

The registration form can be found at:

https://irdta.eu/alcob2020-2021/registration/

DEADLINES (all at 23:59 CET):

Paper submission: January 18, 2021
Notification of paper acceptance or rejection: February 15, 2021
Final version of the paper for the LNCS/LNBI proceedings: March 1st, 2021
Early registration: March 1st, 2021
Late registration: May 24, 2021
Submission to the journal special issue: September 11, 2021

QUESTIONS AND FURTHER INFORMATION:

david (at) irdta.eu

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

University of Montana

IRDTA – Institute for Research Development, Training and Advice, Brussels/London