Nurturing tomorrow's leaders: The ISCB Student Council Symposia in 2018

Adapting beyond borders: Insights from the 19th Student Council Symposium (SCS2023), the first hybrid ISCB Student Council global event

Summary

The 19th ISCB Student Council Symposium (SCS2023) organized by ISCB-SC adopted a hybrid format for the first time, allowing participants to engage in-person in Lyon, France, and virtually via an interactive online platform. The symposium prioritized inclusivity, featuring on-site sessions, poster presentations, and social activities for in-person attendees, while virtual participants accessed live sessions, interactive Q&A, and a virtual exhibit hall. Attendee statistics revealed a global reach, with Europe as the major contributor. SCS2023's success in bridging in-person and virtual experiences sets a precedent for future events in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics.

Availability and Implementation

The details of the symposium, speaker information, schedules, and accepted abstracts, are available in the program booklet (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8173977). For organizers interested in adopting a similar hybrid model, it would be beneficial to have access to details regarding the online platform used, the types of sessions offered, and the challenges faced. Future iterations of SCS can address these aspects to further enhance accessibility and inclusivity.

1st ASCS: Expanding the ISCB Student Council Symposia to Asia

Since 2004, the ISCB Student Council (ISCB-SC) has successfully organized Student Council Symposia across several continents, including North America, Latin America, Europe, and Africa, as well as local events led by more than 25 Regional Student Groups (RSG) across the world. The ISCB-SC Symposia provide students and early career researchers the chance to showcase their work at an international venue in a format that includes keynote talks, round table discussions, workshops, and more. After several efforts spanning several years to build enough critical mass in the region, we have successfully organized the first Asian Student Council Symposium (1st ASCS). This article discusses the organizational details of this unprecedented event, the challenges faced, and the lessons learned.

ISCB Student Council Symposium 2021, a virtual global venue: challenges and lessons learned

Since 2004, the ISCB Student Council has been organizing different symposia worldwide, gathering together the community of young computational biologists. Due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic situation, the world scientific community was forced to cancel in-person meetings for almost two years, imposing the adoption of virtual formats instead. After the successful editions of our continental symposia in 2020 in the USA, Latin America, and Europe, we organized our flagship global event, the Student Council Symposium (SCS) 2021, trying to apply all previous lessons learned and to exploit the advantages that virtuality has to offer.

Highlights of the 1st Ecuadorian-Venezuelan Symposium of Young Researchers in Bioinformatics (1SEVJIB)

The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly changed how scientific conferences are organized, fostering virtual meetings. These online events have allowed students and researchers to overcome geographical, administrative and economic barriers to attend and organize high-quality international symposiums. Moreover, these virtual conferences have contributed to the creation of inclusive activities that strengthen scientific communities. Here, we summarize the main activities and learnings from the 1st Ecuadorian-Venezuelan Symposium of Young Bioinformatics Researchers (1SEVJIB), organized by the Ecuadorian and Venezuelan ISCB-SC Regional Student Groups (RSGs). This symposium aimed to provide an opportunity for undergraduate and postgraduate students from Ecuador, Venezuela, and other Latin American countries to share their Bioinformatics research. The 1SEVJIB was the first bi-national conference organized by two RSGs from Latin America (LatAm). This symposium was a two-day virtual meeting with five activities: 1) oral student presentations, 2) poster session, 3) keynote lectures, 4) workshop, and 5) round table. This conference promoted the scientific exchange and cooperation networks between young Bioinformatics researchers and students from Ecuador, Venezuela, and LatAm, giving them opportunities to boost their scientific careers.

Highlights from the 16th International Society for Computational Biology Student Council Symposium 2020

In this meeting overview, we summarise the scientific program and organisation of the 16th International Society for Computational Biology Student Council Symposium in 2020 (ISCB SCS2020). This symposium was the first virtual edition in an uninterrupted series of symposia that has been going on for 15 years, aiming to unite computational biology students and early career researchers across the globe.

6th European Student Council Symposium (ESCS): overcoming obstacles to enhance virtuality, connectivity, inclusivity and community engagement

This editorial summarises the organisation, activities, and scientific content of the 6th European Student Council Symposium (ESCS) organised by the International Society for Computational Biology Student Council (ISCB-SC). The event was held on September 6, 2020, as a satellite event preceding the ISCB's  19th European Conference in Computational Biology. Both events were first planned to be held in-person in Sitges, Spain, but moved virtually as a strategy to face the SARS-CoV2 sanitary crisis. This completely unforeseen situation has posed several challenges that have been successfully addressed thanks to the robust ISCB Student Council community structure and the strong commitment of the organisers. Despite all the obstacles and challenges, we have found that virtuality has several advantages that can continue to be kept to improve in-person meetings in the future and make conferences more inclusive allowing a larger audience to participate.

4th ISCB Latin American Student Council Symposium: a virtual and inclusive experience during COVID-19 times

Since 2014, the ISCB Latin American Student Council Symposium (LA-SCS) serves as the main biannual activity where students from all levels, postdocs and early researchers from the entire Latin American region can gather to discuss recent advances in the fields of bioinformatics and computational biology. This time we faced a major unexpected obstacle, a worldwide pandemic that has completely disrupted human activities at a planetary scale. Countless conferences have been either canceled, reprogrammed for the next year or moved to a virtual format. However, thanks to an important strengthening of the Latin American student network and the creation of several new RSGs in the continent, we were able to get together a fearless team that aimed to overcome the pandemic obstacles and still organise the 4th LA-SCS. Here we summarize our experiences in our first virtual symposium.