At the ISMB/ECCB 2007 in Vienna, we encouraged an increased participation of scientists involved in experimental biology and those researching in industry. This momentum will be taken further at the meeting in Toronto. This guiding goal will impact the organization of the meeting in many ways including through the introduction of Special Session Tracks (www.iscb.org/ismbeccb2007/specialsessions/) for related disciplines, a special Industry Track (www.iscb.org/ismbeccb2007/industry), Highlight Tracks (www.iscb.org/ismbeccb2007/highlights) for work published in journals frequented by experimental biologists. An increase in the number of keynote presentations will provide insights into open areas of research from experimental perspectives.

We expect over 1600 attendees in Toronto in July 2008.

The Toronto conference program will include around 70 contributed papers that will be selected by an international program committee during a rigorous review process rivaling the editorial procedure for top-rate scientific journals with an acceptance rate of 10-15%. Contributed papers are collected in a volume published by as a Supplement to the OUP Journal Bioinformatics and are available at the conference. In Vienna, there will also be an open track presentation of selected work that is not coupled to a publication. A further point in the program is a lively poster session. At recent ISMB conferences ~1,000 posters have been presented.

http://www.iscb.org/ismb2008/