ICBO2015 Call for submissions *Deadline extended*

*** Relevant dates ***

Conference paper submission: Mar 9, 2015 (11:59pm PST) *Deadline extended*
Conference paper notification: Apr 6, 2015
Camera-ready conference papers: Apr 20, 2015
Workshop paper, software demonstration and early career submission: Apr 13, 2015
Workshop paper, software demonstration and early career notification: May 11, 2015
Camera-ready workshop papers, software demonstration papers/abstracts and early career abstracts: May 25, 2015
Demos and Poster abstract submissions: May 18, 2015
Demos and Poster abstract notifications: June 8th, 2015
Camera-ready poster abstracts: June 15th, 2015

*** Topics ***

Ontologies are knowledge representation tools widely used in the semantic description of biological and medical data from creation to publication and consumption for research and software applications including expert systems. To be maximally effective for a wide range of diverse purposes, such ontologies must be of good quality and work well together. Therefore, issues like good ontology design, ontology coordination, methods for harnessing ontologies for research and applications, and ontology maintenance need to be addressed. The International Conference on Biomedical Ontology (ICBO) series is designed to meet this need. ICBO 2015, the sixth event in the highly successful series, will bring together representatives of all major communities involved in ontology use and development in biomedical research, health care, and related areas.

*** Call for Papers ***

ICBO 2015 is soliciting submissions of novel (not previously published nor concurrently submitted) research papers in the areas of the application of ontologies to biomedical problems, ontology design and ontology interoperability, at any stage in the process from data creation to use in applications or scientific analyses. Submissions will be welcome from a broad range of approaches to ontology building and use. In addition, we would like to invite contributions showcasing methods for ontology-based research, including statistical methods, and contributions addressing the challenges associated with working with multiple ontologies at the same time, including ontology development, visualization, annotation of data, analysis, and applications.

We will accept full-length research and application papers (5 pages), poster submissions (2 page abstracts), software demonstrations (2 page abstracts), and early career researcher symposium submissions (2 page abstracts). A selection of successful poster abstracts will be invited to give flash presentations during the conference. We are also looking for submissions of half-day or full-day workshops and tutorials. Workshops should be working sessions with a specific outcome that can be subsequently presented at the main conference. Tutorials are educational events and may involve hands-on practicals.

Submission of papers is via EasyChair (https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icbo2015), according to the templates provided on the conference web site.

A Best Paper Award, Best Poster Award, Best Demonstration Award, and a Best Early Career Paper Award will be conferred to the author(s) at the conference, selected by the Organizing Committee.

All accepted papers and abstracts will be published in an issue of CEUR-WS (http://ceur-ws.org/). In addition, authors of selected papers will be invited to submit an extended version for publication in a special issue of the Journal of Biomedical Semantics (JBMS), an open-access journal published by BioMed Central (BMC). Note that publication in the JBMS special issue will incur article processing charges.

*** Contact ***

For more information please email icbo2015@googlegroups.com

*** Organizing Committee ***

Scientific Chairs: Francisco Couto (Lisboa, Portugal) and Janna Hastings (Cambridge, UK)
Local Chair: Catia Pesquita (Lisboa, Portugal)
Program Chair: Stefan Schulz (Graz, Austria)
Workshop and Tutorial Chairs: Melanie Courtot (Vancouver, Canada) and João Ferreira (Lisboa, Portugal)
Proceedings and Special Issue Chair: Dietrich Rebholz-Schuhmann (Zurich, Switzerland)
Early Career Chair: Pierre Grenon (London, UK)
Poster and Demonstrations Chair: Matthew Horridge (Stanford, USA)
Sponsorship and Publicity: Emanuel Santos (Lisboa, Portugal) and Pedro Fernandes (Oeiras, Portugal)

*** Program Committee ***

Alan Ruttenberg (University at Buffalo, USA)
Alexander D. Diehl (The Jacobs Neurological Institute, University at Buffalo, USA)
Amanda Hicks (University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, USA)
Anika Oellrich (Sanger Institute, UK)
Barry Smith (SUNY Buffalo, USA)
Bill Hogan (University of Florida)
Christophe Lambert (Montana State University, USA)
Christopher Baker (UNB Saint John, Canada)
Colin Batchelor (Royal Society of Chemistry, UK)
Cristian Cocos (Mayo Clinic, USA)
Cui Tao (SBMI, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, USA)
Dagobert Soergel (Department of Library and Information Studies, University at Buffalo, USA)
Daniel Schober (Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry, Germany)
Despoina Magka (Oxford University Computing Laboratory, UK)
Frank Loebe (University of Leipzig, Germany)
Fred Freitas (CIn-UFPE, Brazil)
Georgios Gkoutos (University of Cambridge, UK)
Gwen Frishkoff (Georgia State University, USA)
Harold Solbrig (Mayo Clinic, USA)
Heinrich Herre (Institute of Medical Informatics, Statistics and Epidemiology, University of Leipzig, Germany)
Helen Parkinson (European Bioinformatics Institute, UK)
James Malone (The European Bioinformatics Institute, Cambridge, UK)
James J Cimino (National Institutes of Health, USA)
James P. McCusker, 5AM Solutions
Jesualdo Tomás Fernández-Breis (Departamento de Informatica y Sistemas, Universidad de Murcia, Spain)
Jim Mccusker (5AM solutions, USA)
Jin-Dong Kim (Database Center for Life Science, Japan)
John Gennari (University of Washington, USA)
José Luís Oliveira (Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal)
Judy Blake (JAX, USA)
Laura Slaughter (Oslo University Hospital, Norway)
Lindsay Cowell (University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, USA)
Ludger Jansen (University of Rostock, Germany)
Mário J. Silva (Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal)
Mark Musen (Stanford University, USA)
Martin Boeker (University Medical Center Freiburg, Germany)
Mathias Brochhausen (University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, USA)
Melissa Haendel (Oregon Health & Science University)
Michael Schroeder (TU Dresden, Germany)
Michel Dumontier (Stanford University, USA)
Nigam Shah (Stanford University, USA)
Olivier Bodenreider (US National Library of Medicine, USA)
Onard Mejino (University of Washington, USA)
Paolo Ciccarese (Harvard Medical School & Massachusetts General Hospital, USA)
Pascale Gaudet (Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Switzerland)
Paul Schofield (University of Cambridge, UK)
Peter Robinson (Charite Universittsmedizin Berlin, Germany)
Phillip Lord (School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, UK)
Robert Stevens (University of Manchester, UK)
Samuel Croset (European Bioinformatics Institute, UK)
Simon Jupp (European Bioinformatics Institute, UK)
Sivaram Arabandi (ONTOPRO, USA)
Suzanne E. Lewis (Lawrence Berkeley National Lab)
Werner Ceusters (SUNY at Buffalo, USA)
Yongqun He (University of Michigan, USA)