ISCB Ebola Award for Important Future Research on the Computational Biology of Ebola Virus

Michal Linial,Winston Hide,Bonnie Berger,Thomas Lengauer,Peter D Karp,Burkhard Rost,Diane Kovats,Pardis Sabeti

doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004087

Abstract

Speed is of the essence in combating Ebola; thus, computational approaches should form a significant component of Ebola research. As for the development of any modern drug, computational biology is uniquely positioned to contribute through comparative analysis of the genome sequences of Ebola strains as well as 3-D protein modeling. Other computational approaches to Ebola may include large-scale docking studies of Ebola proteins with human proteins and with small-molecule libraries, computational modeling of the spread of the virus, computational mining of the Ebola literature, and creation of a curated Ebola database. Taken together, such computational efforts could significantly accelerate traditional scientific approaches. In recognition of the need for important and immediate solutions from the field of computational biology against Ebola, the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) announces a prize for an important computational advance in fighting the Ebola virus. ISCB will confer the ISCB Fight against Ebola Award, along with a prize of US$2,000, at its July 2016 annual meeting (ISCB Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology [ISMB] 2016, Orlando, Florida).

Highlights

ISCB, the International Society for Computational Biology, is dedicated to advancing the understanding of living systems through computation
ISCB represents more than 3,200 computational biologists working in over 70 countries
With the ISCB Fight against Ebola Award, the society offers for the first time an award for a specific scientific objective, thereby acknowledging the urgency of action required to fight a rising challenge

Summary

Introduction

ISCB, the International Society for Computational Biology, is dedicated to advancing the understanding of living systems through computation. ISCB represents more than 3,200 computational biologists working in over 70 countries. It organizes more than seven annual international meetings and confers several major prizes, including the ISCB Senior Scientist Award, the ISCB Overton Prize, and the ISCB Outstanding Contributions Award.

Results

Conclusion