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, evolutionary trees, and structure prediction.

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

The conference will address several of the current challenges in computational biology by investigating algorithms aimed at:

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.

Particular focus will be put on methodology and significant room will be reserved to young scholars at the beginning of their career.

VENUE:

AlCoB 2018 will take place in Hong Kong, the city with the most skyscrapers in the world, one of the highest human development indexes, and the longest life expectancy. The venue will be:

M1603, Li Ka Shing Tower
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Hung Hom, Kowloon
Hong Kong

SCOPE:

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

Exact sequence analysis
Approximate sequence analysis
Pairwise sequence alignment
Multiple sequence alignment
Sequence assembly
Genome rearrangement
Regulatory motif finding
Phylogeny reconstruction
Phylogeny comparison
Structure prediction
Compressive genomics
Proteomics: molecular pathways, interaction networks
Transcriptomics: splicing variants, isoform inference and quantification, differential analysis
Next-generation sequencing: population genomics, metagenomics, metatranscriptomics
Microbiome analysis
Systems biology

STRUCTURE:

AlCoB 2018 will consist of:

invited lectures
peer-reviewed contributions
posters

INVITED SPEAKERS:

tba

PROGRAMME COMMITTEE: (to be completed)

Josep Francesc Abril (University of Barcelona, ES)
Philipp Bucher (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, CH)
José C. Clemente (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, US)
Eytan Domany (Weizmann Institute of Science, IL)
Dmitrij Frishman (Technical University of Munich, DE)
Terry Furey (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, US)
Osamu Gotoh (Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, JP)
Martijn Huynen (Radboud University Medical Centre, NL)
Jesper Jansson (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, HK)
Carlos Martín-Vide (Rovira i Virgili University, ES, chair)
William Stafford Noble (University of Washington, US)
Peter Robinson (The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine, US)
Thomas Sicheritz-Pontén (Technical University of Denmark, DK)
Wing-Kin Sung (National University of Singapore, SG)
Weili Wu (The University of Texas at Dallas, US)
Shibu Yooseph (University of Central Florida, US)

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:

Jesper Jansson (Hong Kong, co-chair)
Konstantinos Mampentzidis (Hong Kong)
Carlos Martín-Vide (Tarragona, co-chair)
Manuel J. Parra-Royón (Granada)
Abdul Raheem (Hong Kong)
David Silva (London)
Sandhya T P (Hong Kong)
Miguel A. Vega-Rodríguez (Cáceres)

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).

Submissions have to be uploaded to:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=alcob2018

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 a major journal 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:

http://grammars.grlmc.com/AlCoB2018/Registration.php

DEADLINES (all at 23:59 CET):

Paper submission: February 11, 2018
Notification of paper acceptance or rejection: March 18, 2018
Final version of the paper for the LNCS/LNBI proceedings: March 28, 2018
Early registration: March 28, 2018
Late registration: June 11, 2018
Submission to the journal special issue: September 27, 2018

QUESTIONS AND FURTHER INFORMATION:

david.silva409 (at) yahoo.com

POSTAL ADDRESS:

AlCoB 2018
Research Group on Mathematical Linguistics (GRLMC)
Rovira i Virgili University
Av. Catalunya, 35
43002 Tarragona, Spain

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Universitat Rovira i Virgili