The InCoB 2011 conference, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

The International Conference on Bioinformatics (InCoB) is an yearly conference in the field of computational biology/ bioinformatics, and this year (2011) it was organized between 30-Nov and 02-Dec in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The organizing and steering committees did a wonderful job by ensuring a lively and valuable platform for researchers from across the globe to meet, share and discuss their work. Piyush (my friend from NTU) and me were fortunate to attend the conference this year. Piyush was presenting his paper on 'building gene regulatory networks from gene expression datasets', while I was presenting a poster on 'yeast cell cycle based study of periodicity in protein complexes'.

We reached KL from Singapore by an Aeroline coach (bus). There are regular luxury and semi-luxury coaches running between Singapore and KL everyday, and the journey takes between 5 and 7 hours depending on traffic. Upon reaching KL, we put up at the Concorde hotel, which is very close to the city central, the Petronas (Twin) towers and the Hard Rock Cafe KL (not sure if the last landmark is a useful bit of information for some!). The conference venue was the Renaissance hotel, not very far (280 meters or 4 min by walk, thanks to Google maps) from our hotel. I personally felt the Renaissance did an excellent job with the organization of the conference - the food was good, there was staff to attend to you always, and there was tea/coffee available at all times (what more could a mentally-stimulating conference ask for!). The conference banquet was at the Saloma, a Malay style "theatre restaurant" engaging us with some good food and traditional Malay dance performances.

The conference was attended by approximately 220 delegates from research institutes and universities across the world, though the majority were from Asian countries. The keynote speeches were very engaging and inspiring, and in particular I would like to mention,

• 'Bench to bedside: changing roles of bioinformatics' by Prof. Minoru Kanehisa (Kyoto University): Prof. Kanehisa spoke about moving from "generalized" medicine towards "personalized" medicine where every patient can keep track of his/her medical history and drugs can be specifically customised for his/her needs.


• 'Biocuration: A cornerstone for research' by Dr. Pascale Gaudet (Swiss Institute for Bioinformatics): Dr. Gaudet spoke about biocuration, which is the curation of biological and medical datasets and organizing these as easy-to-use and distributable resources, as a possible research career.


• 'Sequencing, Sequencing and Sequencing' by Dr. Jun Wang (Beijing Genomics Institute): Dr. Wang spoke about the large-scale sequencing work being done at BGI and its implications on future research. At one place during the talk, Dr. Wang mentioned that the average age of the researchers at BGI working on these sequencing projects is around 21-22, and many do not have PhDs. Yet they manage to get Nature papers out. He believes in 'teaching swimming by directly asking students to venture out into the sea'.
  My comments: I wasn't quite impressed by his approach. Research is not just about Nature papers. A proper systematic training of the scientist is a must, otherwise we'll be producing people who can only do bull work!


• 'Why biologists should care about Wikipedia' by Dr. Alex Bateman (The Sanger Institute): Dr. Bateman spoke about an interesting way of annotating RNA structures and functions using Wikipedia, and how scientists can be engaged in this kind of community-based knowledge-sharing.


• 'Interacting with protein interactions' by Dr. Arthur Olson (The Scripps Institute): Dr. Olson spoke on the molecular graphics and visualization work being done in his lab at the Scripps, and how to connect better the virtual and physical worlds using these technologies.

The conference formed a wonderful platform for young researchers (beginners) like me to directly meet, discuss and network with some of the pioneers and leading researchers in the field. I was fortunate to meet Dr. Martin Frith (CBRC, Tokyo), Dr. Christian Schonbach (Kyushu U), Dr. Mikael Boden (UQueensland), Dr. Tim Bailey (UQueensland), Dr. Paul Horton (CBRC, Tokyo) and Dr. Alex Bateman (Sanger). This was my second meeting with Dr. Horton, the first time being at GIW 2009 (Yokohama, Japan) along with his post-doc Dr. Edward Wijaya (who also completed his PhD from NUS). I had some interesting and engaging discussions with each of them, and learnt many new aspects about the field and otherwise.

I didn't go around KL actually since I had already been there before. So, there are not many exciting photos to share. The only time I went out was with my Professor (Dr. Leong) to meet up with Dr. Francis Ng and his family. Francis completed his PhD under Prof. Leong in 2009 and currently resides in KL with his family. Francis was kind enough to drive us to a Malay vegetarian restaurant serving some awesome food in a lovely environment. Francis, it was great to meet you and your family in KL!

Here are some photos taken during the trip (29-Nov to 02-Dec 2011):
InCoB2011 KL