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About InSyB
The International Symposium on Bioinformatics (InSyB) is APBioNET’s annual symposium series. It occupies the space between InCoB, the network’s flagship International Conference on Bioinformatics, and the workshops and training courses that APBioNET supports locally as opportunities arise. InCoB is large, regional and held once a year in one place. The workshops are small, technical and scheduled around whoever can host them. InSyB sits between the two: a one or two day meeting, hosted by a local institution, built around a theme that institution chooses.
That local ownership is the point of the series. Each host sets the theme, and the themes have followed the host’s own strengths: precision medicine at a medical university in Jakarta, disease therapeutics at a biotechnology department in Andhra Pradesh, omics for environment and human health with Indonesia’s bioinformatics and biodiversity society, healthcare transformation at a university in Doha working alongside its national precision medicine centre.
The programme mixes keynote lectures, short talks, discussion sessions, posters and “meet the expert” opportunities. The emphasis throughout is on early-career researchers. InSyB is built to give students and junior scientists direct access to senior figures in the field, in a meeting small enough that the access is real rather than nominal.
Nine editions have been held since the first, at Universitas YARSI in Jakarta in July 2017. The series has run in Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Türkiye and Qatar, and four editions were held online during and after the pandemic. Attendance has ranged from around one hundred at the smaller in-person meetings to more than six hundred at the largest online one. The full record is on the Where InSyB Has Been page.
InSyB has also tracked the growth of national bioinformatics communities across the region. The first edition in Jakarta followed the establishment, on 10 May 2016, of MABBI, the Indonesian Society for Bioinformatics and Biodiversity, which went on to host the sixth edition in 2022. The second edition, at Perdana University, hosted the signing of a memorandum of understanding between MyBioInfoNet and APBioNET, together with the annual general meeting of the Malaysian Society of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology.
Who attends
InSyB draws researchers, postgraduate students and teaching staff in bioinformatics, computational biology and the life sciences, together with colleagues from the host country’s research institutes, hospitals and public agencies. Participants from beyond the host country join in person or online depending on the edition.
Hosting an edition
APBioNET welcomes expressions of interest from institutions wishing to host a future edition. The host sets the theme and shapes the programme; APBioNET provides the series framework, its regional reach, and support in assembling the speaker list.
For further information, questions and guidelines please contact the InSyB Secretariat: [email protected]