VISUALIZING BIOLOGICAL DATA VIZBI

Papers for Biovis 2013 are now online at the IEEE Digital Library.

Published papers from BioVis 2012 are now available as a supplement to BMC Bioinformatics titled “Highlights from the 2nd IEEE Symposium on Biological Data Visualization“.

A quick reminder that the deadline for tutorial proposals is tomorrow, 1 November 2013 at 23:59 Pacific time (PST). For further information, go to http://vizbi.org/Tutorials/.

Videos from the opening session of VIZBI 2013 are now available at http://vizbi.org/videos/ – videos from the remaining sessions will be released over the coming weeks. In the first video, Bang Wong welcomes delegates to VIZBI 2013, and gives an overview of the VIZBI initiative. Then, Sara Irina Fabrikant discusses how analysis of scientific data can be enhanced using information visualization, visual analytics, cognition principles, and graphical user interface design.

The new Data Visualization Lab at the University of Leuven (Belgium) is looking for good candidates for a postdoc position focusing on scalability in data visualization. Funding is available for 2 years to work in very close collaboration with Intel, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, and IMEC (Interuniversity Micro-electronics Center). Topics include investigating how to leverage multiple cores/nodes to speed up interactivity, how to quickly recalculate different resolutions of the data, and developing measures of “interestingness” to guide users towards parts of the data they might want to look at. For more information, see the position advertisement or contact Prof Jan Aerts. Starting date is as soon as possible.

We invite proposals to run half-day tutorials during the VIZBI tutorial day (4 March 2014). The proposed tutorial should focus on either topical tools and methods, on principles of data visualization, or on user experience design. The deadline for proposals is 1 November 2013, and we will notify applicants by 14 November 2013. Tutors will receive 50% of the tutorial registration fees from tutorial participants. For further information, go to http://vizbi.org/Tutorials/.

VIZBI aims to improve the global standard of data visualisation in the life sciences. In this 17 minute talk, VIZBI chair Seán O’Donoghue outlines how and why VIZBI was created and its impact so far. The talk was part of the ‘Big Data Crossover Evening‘ at the Danish Design Center in Copenhagen. Following the talk, Dr O’Donoghue also recorded a 3 minute interview discussing the future impact of data visualisation in biology.

bit.ly/11rVxYt - The article series on data visualization principles by Bang Wong and Martin Krzywinski is being make freely available by Nature Methods for one month. The 35 article series – called ‘Points of View’ – was initiated by a discussion at the first VIZBI meeting in 2010. They make a great collection!

We are delighted to announce VIZBI 2014, the 2nd EMBO Conference on ‘Visualizing Biological Data’, which will also be the 5th international meeting on this topic, to be held March 5-7 at the EMBL, Heidelberg (Germany). VIZBI 2014 brings together scientists actively using or developing computational visualization methods to study a diverse range of biological data; the conference also encourages participation from medical illustrators, graphic designers, and graphic artists.

VIZBI 2014 features 21 invited talks from high-profile speakers that will review the state-of-the-art and challenges in visualizing data from genomes, transcripts, proteins, cell biology, organisms, and populations. All VIZBI participants have the opportunity to present a poster and lightning talk describing their work. If you cannot join us in Heidelberg, Germany, you have the option of virtual registration, which allows participation via streaming video and chat.

For students, a limited number of CPP fellowships are available, which provide registration fee waiver and/or a travel grant for up to €400. Fellowship applications close 9 December 2013.

Prior to the meeting (March 4), there will also be half-day tutorials on visualization tools & methods. If you are interested in running a tutorial, you are invited to submit a tutorial proposal. The deadline for proposals is 1 November 2013.

If you are interested in promoting your organization or professional society, a range of sponsorship options are also available.

The first four VIZBI meetings have been very lively events, and helped fostered a new focus on data visualization in the life sciences; VIZBI 2014 will have a special focus on new and rapidly emerging research methods – we hope you can join us for this exciting event!

The Royal Society for Chemistry have announced a Faraday Discussion on ‘Molecular Simulations & Visualizations‘, to be held 7-9 May 2014 in Nottingham, UK. The discussion will focus on the use of advanced visualization (visual analytics, virtual and augmented reality, immersive graphics, GP-GPUs, cloud computing) to analyse molecular simulations across a range of applications in biology, chemistry, and materials science. They have issued a call for participation inviting submissions of original research papers for oral presentation, as well as posters. To be selected for an oral presentation, you need to submit an abstract describing your work by Monday, 22 July 2013.

Connect With Science is a public event taking place at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia, on Thursday 30 May 2013 from 7:00 pm-8:30 pm, followed by a mixer. The event is part of the VIVID Ideas festival, and will feature two world-renowned biomedical animators: Graham Johnson (UCSF, USA) and Drew Berry (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, Melbourne), whose work has received international recognition (BAFTA award, 2004; Emmy award, 2005, MacArthur Fellowship, 2010). They will present awe-inspiring animations showing the intricate molecular machines inside your body.

This event is co-organized by ‘VIZBI+ Visualising the Future of Biomedicine’, a new project funded by the Inspiring Australia initiative, the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, the Walter & Eliza Hall Institute, and CSIRO, Australia. For further details, see http://bit.ly/VIVID-VIZBIplus.

HOW YOU CAN PARTICIPATE:
Does your work bridge science and art? Perhaps you’re an artist inspired by science or perhaps you’re a creative scientist? If so, you have an opportunity to share your work with other like-minded people at the event. Around 8:15 pm, just after the keynote talks and preceding the mixer (8:30 pm onwards), there will be an opportunity for a limited number of participants to briefly introduce themselves and their work to the audience (in approx. one minute, and using one projected image). If you wish to take advantage of this opportunity, please send the image you propose to show (PNG format) plus a one-paragraph description of the work you would present to after you have registered for this event. Submissions close 5pm AEST on Wednesday 22 May. Successful participants will be notified by email on Friday 24 May.

TRAVEL FELLOWSHIPS:
We are excited to be able to offer a limited number of travel fellowships to participants based in Australia who need financial help either for purchasing tickets or to get themselves to the event. If you are applying for financial help, in addition to your image and description of your work, you are also required to submit one paragraph explanation of why you need funding and how you plan to “spread the science” from this event back to your community.

VIZBI 2013 was – once again – a very exciting and engaging meeting; many thanks to the speakers, session chairs, poster presenters, tutors, and all who contributed. Overall, the feedback was extremely positive (see below), indicating that VIZBI continues to address an important need that is otherwise largely unmet. Thanks also to those that took the time to give us feedback, including many useful, specific suggestions for improvement; drawn at random from all feedback respondents, the winner of the Interactive Gesture Camera was Dr James Hogan (QUT, Australia). We hope you can join us for VIZBI 2014 (March 5-7) at the EMBL in Heidelberg, Germany, or again in March 2015, when VIZBI returns to the Broad Institute in Cambridge, MA, USA.

At VIZBI 2013, the NVIDIA award for best scientific poster went to James Rosindell from Imperial College London, UK, for his poster ‘OneZoom: A Fractal Explorer for the Tree of Life’. The Autodesk award for best Art & Biology poster went to Christopher Hammang from CSIRO, Australia, for his poster ‘The Hungry Microbiome’. Both awards were decided by popular vote open to all conference attendees. James received an NVIDIA Quadro K5000, and Christopher received a Maya license. Congratulations James and Christopher, and many thanks once again to our two generous sponsors.

A creative summary of the conference is at http://vizbi.org/2013/Photos/: as last year, Francis Rowland from the EBI made sketch-notes for each talk and put them up on flickr. Thanks Francis!

… have begun appearing at http://vizbi.org/2013/Photos/. The images below are thumbnails only - to see larger versions, go to the 2013 photo page.

Here’s the link to the Google doc from the ‘Systems Biology: beyond the hairball‘

The 2013 posters are at http://vizbi.org/Posters/2013. For the Wednesday 6pm Breakout session, participants can propose and vote for topics at http://bit.ly/vizbi2013breakouts (you’ll need to log in with a Google ID). For Twitter please use the ‘#vizbi’ hashtag; we encourage participants to upload photos from VIZBI to Flickr and use the tag ‘vizbi’ – they will appear at http://vizbi.org/2013/Photos/.

A heads-up that conference registration and one-day registration will close Sunday, 17 March, at 11:59 pm EST. However, registration for virtual participation will remain open throughout the meeting.