The websites and blog posts of the OBF go back a long way, with the first posts having been published all the way back in June 2001. Keeping them accessible and findable under stable links is not an easy feat, especially given that since 2001 we’ve changed the way we create and serve those pages more than once, most recently in March of this year.

We recognize that the high price of travel and registration can make it hard for some people to attend BOSC/ISMB. Below are some ways to apply for financial assistance to present your work at BOSC 2025. OBF Event Fellowships The Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF)’s Event Fellowships are aimed at increasing diverse participation at events promoting open science in the bioinformatics and biological research communities.

Chris Mungall (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) Keynote talk for joint BOSC/BOKR session (title TBA) Dr. Chris Mungall is a Senior Scientist at the Berkeley Lab, where he heads the Biosystems Data Science department.

We are pleased to announce that BOSC and the newly-renamed Bio-Ontologies and Knowledge Representation (BOKR) will join forces for a day at ISMB/ECCB 2025!

CollaborationFest 2025 will be a two-day collaborative work event at which participants work together to contribute code, documentation, training materials, and challenging analysis problems and use cases. Bring your own project ideas or come ready to collaborate with others on their projects! BOSC has held CollaborationFests (aka CoFests) every year before or after ISMB since 2010.

Over the past few weeks, we have been working behind the scenes to migrate our website, resulting in the page that you currently have in front of you! Our pages are now generated by the Go -based, open source static site generator Hugo , and are stored on GitHub.

The call for applications for round 1 of the OBF Event Fellowship for 2025 is now open. The deadline for this round is 1 April 2025. You can submit your application through this Google Form. We have provided a Word template to help you draft the application locally before filling out the form – make a copy of this template.

ISMB CollaborationFest 2025 will be a collaborative work event at which participants work together to contribute code, documentation, training materials, and challenging analysis problems and use cases. If you are interested in learning and contributing in an intensely collaborative environment, then CollaborationFest is for you. Bring your own project ideas or come ready to collaborate with others on their projects!

We invited our community to nominate potential keynote speakers for BOSC, and we were delighted with the many excellent suggestions received. In the next stage of this process, we’re providing you with an opportunity to express any concerns regarding the suitability of any nominated individuals as BOSC Keynote Speakers. Our invited speaker selection process and criteria include examples of potential reasons for exclusion.

We invite you to join us for BOSC 2025, a vibrant gathering at the forefront of open-source bioinformatics and open science!

The Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF) Event Fellowship program aims to promote diverse participation at events promoting open-source bioinformatics software development and open science practices in the biological research community.