[sem-grd] PSB call Semantic Webs for Life Sciences track

[Carole Goble]

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                         Call for Papers and Posters

                       Semantic Webs for Life Sciences

                at the Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing 2006
                           http://psb.stanford.edu/
                              January 3-7, 2006
                  Grand Wailea Resort, Wailea, Maui, Hawaii

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Biology is evolving from a science of organisms and molecules to one
that increasingly relies on processing data. These data range from raw
sequences represented in a reasonably computational form, to the vast
body of annotation of these data that are less amenable to computational
processing. The shift from hypothesis-driven experiments to data-driven
experiments relies on having computational access to all these data and
the tools that manipulate those data.

The Semantic Web is a vision that moves the Web from a form that is only
really usable by humans, to one where the data and services are open to
autonomous computational agents. This vision relies on the semantics of
both the content and services on the Web being accessible to computers.
Semantic markup through ontologies developed in OWl or RDF are meant to
provide this semantic markup -- OWL is, after all, the web Ontology
Language. As the recent biomedical ontology sessions at PSB have
revealed, there is much activity within bioinformatics in the field of
semantic markup of data. The discipline is well poised to build
Semantic Webs for Life Sciences that will afford bioinformatics
applications deeper computational access to the knowledge element of
bioinformatics resources.

This session on Semantic Webs for Life Sciences would therefore welcome
papers that discuss:

     * The creation and use of Semantic Web applications
     * Reasoning about the biomedical domain based on Semantic Web
       technologies to make scientific insights
     * Intelligent agent technologies and associated ontologies
     * Use of Semantic Web technologies to bridge between heterogeneous
       information resources (e.g., to connect genotype to gene
       expression and ultimately to clinical medicine, drug discoveries,
       etc.)
     * Use of Semantic Web technologies to make biomedical applications
       interoperable
     * The use of OWL, RDF, etc. to describe and use knowledge in the
       biomedical arena
     * Advances in Semantic Web related technologies as applied to
       bioinformatics and biomedical problems
     * Other research associated with Semantic Webs for Life Sciences

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   Session co-chairs

     * Robert Stevens (Contact Person)
       University of Manchester, UK
       robert.stevens at manchester.ac.uk

     * Olivier Bodenreider
       National Library of Medicine
       olivier at nlm.nih.gov

     * Yves A. Lussier
       Columbia University, NY, USA
       yves.lussier at dbmi.columbia.edu

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   Submission information


       Papers and Posters

The core of the conference consists of rigorously peer-reviewed
full-length papers reporting on original work. Accepted papers will be
published in a hard-bound archival proceedings, and the best of these
will be presented orally to the entire conference. Researchers wishing
to present their research without official publication are encouraged to
submit a one page abstract by November 1, 2005 to present their work in
the poster sessions.


       Important dates

     * Paper submissions due: July 18, 2005
     * Notification of paper acceptance: September 6, 2005
     * Final paper deadline: September 23, 2005
     * Abstract deadline: November 1, 2005
     * Meeting: January 3-7, 2006


       Paper format

All papers must be submitted to russ.altman at stanford.edu in electronic
format. The file formats we accept are: postscript (*.ps), Adobe Acrobat
(*.pdf) and Microsoft Word documents (*.doc). Attached files should be
named with the last name of the first author (e.g. altman.ps, altman.pdf,
or altman.doc).
Hardcopy submissions or unprocessed TEX or LATEX files will be rejected
without review.

Each paper must be accompanied by a cover letter. The *cover letter must
state* the following:

     * The email address of the corresponding author
     * The specific PSB session that should review the paper or abstract
     * The submitted paper contains original, unpublished results, and
       is not currently under consideration elsewhere.
     * All co-authors concur with the contents of the paper.


Submitted papers are limited to twelve (12) pages in our publication
format. Please format your paper according to instructions found at
http://psb.stanford.edu/psb-online/psb-submit/. If figures can not be
easily resized and placed precisely in the text, then it should be clear
that with appropriate modifications, the total manuscript length would
be within the page limit.

Color pictures can be printed at the expense of the authors. The fee is
$500 per page of color pictures, payable at the time of camera ready
submission.

Contact Russ Altman (russ.altman at stanford.edu) for additional information
about paper submission requirements.

-- 
Carole Goble
Professor of Computer Science
University of Manchester
UK
tel: +44 161 275 6195
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~carole