The Open Bioinformatics Foundation (OBF) Event Fellowship program aims to support and encourage diverse participation at events focusing on open source bioinformatics software development and open science practices in the biological research community. Each year we open two calls for applications, deadlines for which are 1 April and 1 October.

We are delighted to announce that Caleb Kibet and Hilyatuz Zahroh, two members who recently joined the OBF board, will be joining Malvika Sharan as the co-chairs of the OBF Event Fellowship program. Inviting contributions from the OBF board members, as well as bringing insights from their lived experiences, Caleb, Hilya and Malvika will re-evaluate how we can manage the OBF Event fellowship more effectively going forward.

Hi everyone! My name is Melissa and I’m happy to be collaborating with OBF as lead GSoC admin this year along with support from Yo Yehudi. I had a great (virtual) time at BOSC 2021 as an Outreachy intern and am glad to be supporting another internship program this year. It’s time to start coming up with GSoC project ideas again! Below is some info that should help with that.

As previously described, during the November 2021 public Board meeting, the OBF announced two new initiatives to be voted on by the OBF membership. Both of these received a large majority of votes: OBF Community Support Sponsorship (53 for, 3 against, 2 abstaining) OBF Code of Conduct (54 for, 2 against, 1 abstaining) The work to set up the new Community Support Sponsorship is underway.

Date & Time: Tuesday, February 22, 2022, 15:00 UTC / 11am EDT Location: online webinar hosted by ISCB Speaker: Yo Yehudi, Open Life Science (former OBF board member and Google Summer of Code admin & mentor) Topic: Growing open source communities with internships The ISCB, which runs the annual ISMB conference, is offering a series of ISCBacademy webinars hosted by the Communities of Special Interest (COSIs), which include BOSC/OBF.

During our last public Board meeting, the OBF announced two new initiatives that are being proposed for approval by the OBF membership in a formal votes. 1. OBF Community Support Sponsorship: a proposed new grant programme, based on the OBF Event Fellowships but aimed at supporting grassroots projects running events in their own communities.

BOSC 2022 BOSC 2022 was held July 13-14, 2022, as part of the hybrid ISMB 2022 (in person in Madison, Wisconsin, USA and online). A joint BOSC/ Bio-Ontologies session included keynote speaker Melissa Haendel. Jason Williams’s talk was a joint BOSC/Education COSI keynote. The program closed with a panel about Building and Sustaining Inclusive Open Science Communities.

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.

The OBF held a public Board meeting on September 21, 2021, via Zoom. During the meeting, one Board member, Bastian Greshake Tzovaras, whose term expired, was elected to another term as Board member-at-large, and two new Board members were elected: Hilyatuz Zahroh and Caleb Kibet. Additionally, two proposals were presented (see below). The meeting minutes will be made available in the obf-docs GitHub repository.

The deadline for applying for an OBF Event Fellowship has just been extended to October 4, 2021 ! The OBF Event Fellowship program is aimed at increasing diverse participation at events relating to open source bioinformatics. You can read blog posts by previous Event Fellowship recipients. See more details on our webpage, and submit your application at https://forms.gle/7ocmgvypiFHeFNfy7 !

Date, Time, and How to Join Date and time: 2021-09-21, 17:00 UTC (10am PT / 1pm ET / 18:00 UK) Participation link: https://lbnl.zoom.us/j/97312757115 Password: OBF2021 Meeting ID: 973 1275 7115 Agenda Approve minutes from the previous Public Board Meeting: https://github.com/OBF/obf-docs/pull/87 Term expirations and Elections to the Board (electronic ballot) Hilyatuz Zahroh and Caleb Kibet, running for