PMC:3403002 / 198-4792 JSONTXT

{"project":"2_test","denotations":[{"id":"23046669-12432404-14918750","span":{"begin":107,"end":108},"obj":"12432404"},{"id":"23046669-20840723-14918751","span":{"begin":1416,"end":1417},"obj":"20840723"},{"id":"23046669-21689468-14918752","span":{"begin":1537,"end":1538},"obj":"21689468"},{"id":"23046669-20840723-14918753","span":{"begin":1827,"end":1828},"obj":"20840723"},{"id":"23046669-21689468-14918754","span":{"begin":1829,"end":1830},"obj":"21689468"}],"text":"Background\nIt's almost 10 years since the computational systems biology concept has been proposed in 2002 [1]. We witnessed the impact of collaboration and integration among biology, physics, mathematics and computer science on biological and medical research in the past decade. As a result, this energetic interdisciplinary field, i.e., computational systems biology keeps making significant progresses to address fundamental questions in biology and to further lead to practical applications in medicine, drug discovery, and bio-engineering. We are glad to see that the expanding trend is still there with the boom of next generation sequencing technology.\nIn addition to the progress on individual research works, the past decade also witnessed the boom of societies of computational systems biology. In China, Systems Biology and Bioinformatics have become intensive research topics and attracted many leading scientists working in biology, physics, mathematics, and computer science. Optimization, statistics, and many other mathematical methods have been widely adopted in the field. Four years ago, we launched an international symposium on Optimization and Systems Biology, which focused on bridging opportunities between optimization methodology and systems biology problems. We are happy to see the mutual benefits both in solving specific biological problems and in new theory and algorithm development [2]. In 2010, OSB conference was formally renamed as International Conference on Computational Systems Biology (ISB2010) [3]. The successful International Conferences on Optimization and Systems Biology (OSB2007, OSB2008, and OSB2009) and the International Conference on Computational Systems Biology (ISB2010) have created a flexible platform and brought many researchers and students to freely exchange ideas [2,3]. However a conference is not an organization and is limited in its power to continuously support the development of the interdisciplinary field. It is in pressing need to extend the conference to a well-organized research society for scientists, researchers, educators, and practitioners to exchange ideas and approaches, to present research findings, find state-of-the-art solutions, and organize various activities in this interdisciplinary field, including mathematical methods and its applications in biosciences and researches on a variety of aspects of Systems Biology.\nTherefore, Prof. Xiang-Sun Zhang, the honorary president of Operations Research Society of China (ORSC), proposed to establish a computational systems biology society under ORSC to emphasize the integration of experimental and computational research to understand the complex biological systems. The idea was greatly supported by Prof. Ya-Xiang Yuan (the president of ORSC) and also the scientists in this field. As a result, the Computational Systems Biology Society of ORSC in China was formally set up in 2011 (website http://www.sysbio-cn.org/). Initially the society has over 120 members and a council with 35 board members representing the universities and research institutes all over China. The board member elected Prof. Luonan Chen, a professor from Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, to be the founding president of this new society. Importantly, the society will keep supporting the series conference of ISB and has made it the annual conference for all the members. In addition, the Technical Committee on Systems Biology of IEEE Systems, Man, and Cyberstics society decided to financially sponsor the 5th International Symposium on Computational Systems Biology (ISB 2011), with the goal to provide a forum for exchanging ideas and information among researchers and engineers in the field of Systems Biology from engineering perspectives.\nAs a result, this conference is formally renamed as the 5th IEEE International Conference on Computational Systems Biology (IEEE ISB2010). To match the name, we call for the participants from an even wider range. In addition to the sponsorships from IEEE SMC, Computational Systems Biology Society of ORSC, National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), Academy of Mathematics and Systems Sciences of CAS (AMSS), Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences of CAS (SIBS), it was further sponsored by Sun Yat-Sen University.\nWe strongly believe that the joint efforts of societies, funding agencies, research institutes, and universities will further push the development of computational methodologies for systems biology and the practical applications in biology, medicine, drug discovery, and engineering in future."}