OBJECTIVE
The Symposium's objective is to bring together leading researchers in all disciplines that apply computational methodologies to problems in biotechnology and bioinformatics, and to showcase state-of-the-art research and development activities in areas such genome sequencing and annotation, functional and computational genomics, transcriptomics, and the analysis of high-throughput data, among many others. The Symposium brings together scientists in multiple disciplines such as computer scientists, engineers, and researchers from biotechnology, bioinformatics, and the medical research community, and seeks to promote future interdisciplinary activity and research in these areas.
To attract leading researchers from the many disciplines that perform biotechnology and bioinformatics research, BIOT recognizes that these disciplines have their own traditions for conference presentation and publication, and has put in place a flexible submission process to accommodate these differences. In computer science, for example, it is customary to require the submission of full papers for review several months prior to a conference or symposium, whereas conferences in other disciplines generally require only that an abstract or extended abstract be submitted for review. The organizing committee of BIOT understands these differences, and accepts full papers, abstracts, and poster presentations.
Podium speakers will be invited from both full papers and abstracts.
Extended abstracts (for full papers), abstracts, and poster abstracts will be printed in the conference proceedings.
Accepted full papers will be published after the conference in a special issue of BMC Bioinformatics, a leading, high-profile bioinformatics journal.
We particularly encourage graduate and post doctoral students to submit their contributions as complete papers, abstracts, or poster presentations.

HISTORY
The symposium started in Colorado Springs in 2004. It was held previously at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs (2004, 2005 and 2007), at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah (2006), at the University of Texas at Arlington (2008), at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (2009), at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (2010), and at Rice University co-hosted with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (2011). Started as a regional event, the Symposium has now become national and international symposium attracting research papers and poster contributions from all over the United States and several foreign countries.

Details for the 2012 symposium are still to be decided. The tentative dates are given above. The actual dates will be posted later.