NCB

About

Nordic Computational Biology, also known as Nordic CompBio (NCB) is a resource and community development platform for people who are in or want to approach the fields of computational biology, bioinformatics, and related areas. NCB aims to build and promote the bioinformatics field and community in the Nordics, through highlighting current events and the latest research ongoing in the field at academic and industrial level. NCB aims to be an inclusive and open platform for all to help build new networks and collaborations.

Background

As part of the Nordic e-Infrastructure Collaboration (NeIC) pre-study, NCB has been working on community development and strengthening the NCB Core T eam, while also managing to organize the first flagship event i.e. NCB Week 2023. Attending bioinformatics conferences is often challenging for many reasons such as due to the demand of attending physically and the requirement of being affiliated to a research group in order to have the opportunity. Generally, the price tag for attending such an event is large and requires specific grant applications from the attendees. NCB Week 2023 was designed to be affordable (free) and open to everyone,

regardless of their affiliation or field of expertise. Over the pre-study period the Nordic CompBio T eam has extended from 4 to 9 core team members and from 3 to 4 Nordic countries. Our work was professionalized through the establishment of a recognized non-profit organization in Sweden and internal sub-committees for dedicated tasks.

NCB Week 2023 - Highlights

NCB Week, organized in a hybrid format, is based on a hub-and-spoke model which means the conference consists of regional events taking place across the Nordic. For NCB Week 2023, participating regions were Sweden, Denmark and Finland. The regional teams were guided and supported by the NCB team to succeed and achieve an overall coherent conference. The hybrid and hub-and-spoke models are money-saving, time-saving, and environmentally-friendly. All participating speakers were encouraged to allow their work to be live-streamed to a wider audience. T o allow for physical interaction, the location where the talks were streamed from, also arranged for on-site participation including providing meals (lunch and dinner). NCB Week 2023 attracted over 350 participants for on-site attendance and over 200 attendees that joined virtually; a summary of virtual attendance registration for the different regional events can be found in Figure 1 (page 3).

The regional event in Finland took place at the University of Eastern Finland (Kuopio campus). The one-day event included nine presentations and four flash talks from PhD candidates. There was a diversity of speakers from different countries including Italy, Germany, Indonesia and Finland (all work in Finland). More than 50 participants attended in-person and virtually, with a gender balance of 40% women and 60% men in the audience. T alks covered post-clustering approaches in omics data for cancer research, challenges in predicting health outcomes, using MRI images, and the significance of semi-supervised machine learning in single-cell RNA sequencing analysis. Additionally, talks delved into microbiome predictions for cardiovascular diseases, toxicology challenges in drug screening, and the potential of machine learning in accelerating drug discovery and screening process for a safer and more efficient pharmaceutical development. The regional event in Denmark was organized by the Associate Professor Shilpa Garg (advisory board member, NCB) and hosted at the DTU Biosustain Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability. It was the smaller event of the three which likely had to do with marketing strategy. Importantly, the event was appreciated by both physical and virtual attendees and over the course of two half days. There were, in total, 45 persons attending on-site; 50% identify as women and 50% identify as men. T opics covered during the event included the use of deep learning for biological data analysis, cutting-edge genome sequencing technologies, impact of good-quality genome assemblies for precision medicine research, and development and maintenance of software in bioinformatics where the tool antiSMASH was used as an example.

The regional event in Sweden was by far the largest, which is most likely due to the fact that the event is reoccurring on an annual basis as the “Swedish Bioinformatics Workshop”. The Swedish event attracted around 250 participants over the course of two days. The whole breadth of bioinformatics was covered; from metagenomics, metabolomics and the microbiome over spatial proteomics, antibiotic resistance, and human short tandem repeat variation to biomedical image analysis and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data. There were also discussions on use of cutting-edge technology such as AI (Artificial Intelligence) and high-throughput techniques. On-site participants were also able to participate in parallel workshops on data management, software development, multi-omics integration and image analysis. All participants had the opportunity to present their work in a poster session. Speakers and participants included the Nordics and Germany and to a lesser extent the rest of Europe and the world.

Results

The 1st NCB Conference Week was a successful event as it attracted audiences from all over the Nordics, as well as outside the Nordics. The hybrid format allowed participants to attend keynotes and talks online and on-site. The format also helped existing events such as the Swedish Bioinformatics Workshop (https://sbw2023.eu/) to reach a wider audience and a collaboration with Nordic organizations such as the NCB platform added weight to securing funding. The event allowed for industrial bioinformaticians, academic researchers, students, and key stakeholders to stay updated with developments from across the Nordics. Each regional event included or wrapped-up with a networking event; the social events were well received by both the attendees and the speakers. They provided a casual way to connect with other bioinformaticians; a summary of the feedback can be found in Figure 2 (page 4). In addition to the pre-study funding by the Nordic e-Infrastructure Collaboration (NeIC), NCB received sponsorships from following organizations for the regional programmes of the NCB. Conference Week were Science for Life Laboratory, National Bioinformatics Infrastructure Sweden, University of Eastern Finland, Orion Pharma, Olink, ISCB-SC, Karolinska University Hospital, KTH Royal Institute of T echnology, Pixelgen T echnologies, Seqera Labs, and Eigenskills.