Last Call for Papers for the

4th International Workshop on Practical Applications of Computational Biology & Bioinformatics (IWPACBB '2010)

16th - 18th June, 2010 - Guimarães - Portugal

http://iwpacbb2010.di.uminho.pt


The success of Bioinformatics in recent years has been prompted by research in Molecular Biology and Molecular Medicine in initiatives like the Human Genome project. These initiatives gave rise to an exponential increase in the volume and diversification of data, including nucleotide and protein sequences and annotations, high-throughput experimental data, biomedical literature, among many others.

Systems Biology is a related research area that has been replacing the reductionist view that dominated Biology research in the last decades, requiring the coordinated efforts of biological researchers with those related to data analysis, mathematical modelling, computer simulation and optimization.

The accumulation and exploitation of large-scale data bases prompts for new computational technology and for research into these issues. In this context, many widely successful computational models and tools used by biologists in these initiatives, such as clustering and classification methods for gene expression data, are based on Computer Science/ Artificial Intelligence (CS/AI) techniques. In fact, these methods have been helping in tasks related to knowledge discovery, modeling and optimization tasks, aiming at the development of computational models so that the response of biological complex systems to any perturbation can be predicted.

The 4^th *International Workshop on Practical Applications of Computational Biology & Bioinformatics (IWPACBB)* wants to promote the interaction among the scientific community to discuss applications of CS/AI with an interdisciplinary character, exploring the interactions between sub-areas of CS/ AI, Bioinformatics, Chemoinformatics and Systems Biology.

Brand new ideas will be greatly appreciated as long as relevant revisions and actualizations of previously presented work, project summaries and PhD thesis presented or not.

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS
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Everyone interested in participating and presenting his/her work in this workshop may do it by sending a contribution. The papers should be written in English. There are three possibilities:

1- Long papers:

A maximum length of 8 pages. They must consist of original, relevant and previously unpublished sound research results related to any of the topics of the conference.

2- Short papers:

A maximum length of 4 pages. They can be project reports, a summary of a PhD thesis, or work in progress.

3- Doctoral consortium:

PhD students are invited to present the topic and progress of their research, in order to obtain feedback from a panel of experts. The length of these papers should be no longer than 8 pages.

- Papers Format

Papers must be prepared according to the template of Springer (MS-WORD or LaTex format) for the Advances in Intelligent and Soft Computing series (http://www.springer.com/series/4240?detailsPage=contentItemPage&CIPageCounter=156163).

- Publication

All papers accepted will be published in a special volume of Advances in Intelligent and Soft Computing (Springer). Therefore, the papers will be indexed by ISI Proceedings, DBLP, Ulrich's, SCOPUS, Zentralblatt Math, MetaPress and Springerlink.

A Special issue in the International Journal of Data Mining and Bioinformatics (IJDMB) (InderScience) will include extended versions of the best papers.

At least one of the authors will be required to register and attend the symposium to present the paper in order to include the paper in the workshop proceedings.

- Submitting papers

In order to submit a paper you must register as an author at IWPACBB 2010 conference management system (https://cmt.research.microsoft.com/PACBB2010/). All papers must be submitted in electronic form (PDF format, original document word or latex and images).


IMPORTANT DATES
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- Paper submission deadline: 22nd February, 2010
- Notification of acceptance: 15th March, 2010
- Final version submission: 29th March, 2010
- IWPACBB '2010 celebration: 16th -18th June, 2010

TOPICS
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Computational areas of interest include, but are not limited to:
* Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining techniques for the Analysis of high-throughput biological data (trancriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, fluxomics).
* Biomedical Text Mining and Language Processing.
* Machine Learning and Pattern Recognition.
* Rough, Fuzzy and Hybrid Techniques.
* Hidden Markov Models.
* Bayesian Approaches.
* Artificial Neural Networks.
* Support Vector Machines.
* Evolutionary Computing.
* Case-Based Reasoning systems.
* Non-linear dynamical analysis methods and Intelligent signal processing.
* Feature selection.

Biological areas of interest include, but are not limited to:
* Sequence analysis.
* Comparison and alignment methods.
* Motif, gene and signal recognition.
* Molecular evolution.
* Phylogenetics and phylogenomics.
* Determination or prediction of the structure of RNA and protein in two and three dimensions.
* DNA twisting and folding.
* Gene expression and gene regulatory networks.
* Deduction of metabolic pathways.
* Microarray design and analysis.
* Proteomics.
* Functional genomics.
* Molecular docking and drug design.
* Computational problems in genetics such as linkage and QTL analysis, linkage disequilibrium analysis in populations, and haplotype determination.
* Molecular and cellular interactions.
* Emergence of properties in complex biological systems.
* Visualization of biological systems and networks.
* Data and software integration.
* In silico optimization of biological systems.
* Metabolic engineering applications.
* Cell simulation and modelling.
* Metabolic, regulatory and signalling networks: properties, dynamics, inference and reverse engineering.
* Metabolomics.

GENERAL CO-CHAIRS
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Organizing Committee (chairs)

Miguel Rocha - CCTC, Univ. Minho (Portugal)
Florentino Fernández Riverola - University of Vigo (Spain)

Scientific Committee (chairs)

Hagit Shatkay – Queens University, Canada
Juan M. Corchado - Universidad de Salamanca, Spain


CONTACTS
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Email: mrocha@di.uminho.pt
Web Site: http://iwpacbb2010.di.uminho.pt