Technical Activities -- Bioinformatics and Bioengineering Technical Committee (BBTC)

The BBTC is gearing up for its annual Conference on Computational Intelligence in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. CIBCB will be held this year in the USA in St. Louis, May 30 - Jun 2. St. Louis is a great location for us because it has a large biotech industry base. Dr. Donald Wunsch is the general chair, and the keynote speaker will be Dr. Gilad Gross. He will talk to us about medical data and about what doctors hope for from CI researchers. We are looking forward to the reception in the world famous St. Louis Zoo.

As usual, a frustration with organizing this conference is the large number of out of scope submissions. Researchers have no problem understanding what bioinformatics and computational biology are, but many do not know what computational intelligence is. We have a lot of work to do both as a technical committee and as part of the CIS to educate researchers and promote the use of CI techniques. In bioinformatics and computational biology, there is a growing need for computational technicians. This makes it even more critical for those of us working with biologists and physicians to be able to make the distinction between technician and researcher. CI has a lot to offer this field. We need to make sure that both computational researchers and their collaborators know this.