Call for Workshop/SIG proposals

Please note that the submissions deadline has passed. The call for Workshop/SIG proposals is closed.

The ECCB2022 program committee invites proposals of 3-hour workshops or special interest group meetings (SIGs) preceding the 21st European Conference on Computational Biology in Sitges. The sessions, organised under the umbrella of New Trends in Bioinformatics by ECCB, will be held virtually from the 12th to the 16th of September and in face-to-face format on the 18th of September 2022.

The workshops/SIGs are expected to provide participants with an informal setting to discuss scientific and technical issues, exchange research ideas, and to share practical experiences on a range of focused or emerging topics in bioinformatics.

Each workshop/SIG should provide an interesting perspective on the cutting edge of a selected research field. Workshops may include any form of presentation such as talks or panel discussions. Some attractive topics include (but not limited to them):

• Interpretable machine learning
• Climate crisis and health
• Imaging-based bioinformatics
• Sensitive data bioinformatics
• Single-cell -omics
• Plant -omics
• Recent advances in metagenomics
• The other omics: metabolomics, lipidomics, nutrigenomics
• Making scientific research reproducible: software containers and workflows
• Relevance of the data and software management

The organiser(s) of a workshop will be fully responsible for the workshop’s scientific content: they may invite speakers or call for submissions, or combine the two options.

Workshops and SIGs held in previous editions can be found here: ECCB2018 and ECCB2016.

Tue, 25 January 2022	Call for Workshop/SIG proposals open
Thu, 17 February 2022	Submission deadline for Workshop/SIG proposals
Thu, 24 Feb 2022	Extended submission deadline for Workshop/SIG proposals
Wed, 30 March 2022	Acceptance notification for Workshops/SIGs
Wed, 1 June 2022	Detailed schedule with speakers online
Fri, 1 July 2022	Complete Workshops/SIGs program online
12 – 16 September 2022	Virtual Workshops/SIGs days at ECCB2022
Sun, 18 September 2022	Face-to-face Workshops/SIGs day at ECCB2022

Each workshop proposal should not exceed 4 pages and should include the following information:

• Title (up to 12 words, preferably worded to pique delegates’ interest).
• Topic: describe the topic to be covered during the session.
• Abstract: including topic and its relevance for the conference participants as well as session goals, motivation, and scope of the workshop.
• Description of the target audience and expected audience numbers.
• List of tentative speakers and/or attendees and names of the speakers who have already agreed to participate. (This information is not required, but may add weight to the proposal).
• History of the workshop with attendance statistics if this is not the first instance.
• Selection mode for contributions (e.g. invitation or call for submissions) and plan for the selection of a gender-balanced panel.
• Relevant experience of the organising committee.
• Tentative organising committee members (at least 2 to 3 members).
• Potential sources of sponsorship for the session.
• Preferred day/s and time slot/s.  From the 12th to the 16th of September the time slots available will be (i) from 13:30h to 16:30h and (ii) from 17h to 20h (CEST time zone). On the 18th of September the time slots available will be (i) from 9h to 12:30h and (ii) from 13:30h to 17h (CEST time zone). 
• Preferred delivery format: virtual, face-to-face, no preference – elaborate your answer. In the case of preferring to deliver in face-to-face format: the slots for face-to-face workshop sessions will be limited. Please indicate if you would accept organising your workshop in virtual format in case of not being assigned to a face-to-face slot. 
• Contact information of the organiser(s): full name, affiliation and email.

An evaluation committee will consider the following criteria in assessing proposals: relevance to the ECCB2022 attendees, expertise and experience of the organisers and speakers, feasibility of the proposal, commitment to select a gender-balanced panel, and overlap with workshops held in previous editions, along with the clarity and quality of the proposal.

Please save your proposals in PDF format and send them through Easychair using the following link: (submission closed)

The workshop sessions will take place on the 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th and 18th of September 2022. From the 12th to the 16th of September the workshops will run virtually and on the 18th they will take place in face-to-face format. ECCB2022 will help with the administrative aspects of facilitating the streaming and online participation platforms, rent and assigning rooms, making announcements, providing technical advising service to better design the workshop, and publishing the detailed schedule in the conference program. The organisers and speakers of the virtual workshops/SIGs will be asked to attend a technical rehearsal session in the days prior to the workshop and will count on the support of a technician during the streaming of their session.

All the organisers and speakers selected for the face-to-face sessions are expected to deliver their talk in person from the venue of the conference. ECCB2022 cannot financially support the workshop speakers or organisers in their travel and accommodation costs. The workshop organisers are strongly encouraged to seek independent funding for travel and accommodation and to include any commitment that they may have secured in the proposal.

The virtual workshop/SIGs fees will be used to cover the costs for the streaming and online participation services, whereas the registration fees for the face-to-face workshops will serve to rent the room, provide the rooms’ technical equipment, coffee breaks catering and lunch. For each accepted virtual workshop, up to two organisers will receive free access to the complete virtual programme of New Trends in Bioinformatics by ECCB (subject to the same registration guidelines that apply to the rest of participants). For each workshop selected for the face-to-face sessions that will run on the 18th of September, up to two organisers will be granted free passes to the rest of the New Trends in Bioinformatics by ECCB sessions during that day. Up to two speakers per workshop will have free access to the session where they participate. The names of the organisers and speakers who receive free passes will have to be registered in the programme of their session.

The presentations and reference material used by the organisers and the speakers will be made available for download from the ECCB2022 website. If such material includes slides and docx documents, the organisers should send them in PDF format to eccb2022@bcocongresos.com before the 2nd of September 2022.

The workshops/SIGs organisers are expected to operate within the context of the ECCB2022 procedures, including finalising the program and providing all the relevant material by the deadlines, operating within the budget, working in agreement with the ECCB2022 copyright statement and following the Code of Conduct. ECCB2022 reserves the right to cancel a scheduled workshop/SIG if by July 29th the number of registered participants to the session is less than 20.

For more information please contact the technical secretariat: eccb2022@bcocongresos.com

The workshops/SIGs sessions are scheduled on the 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th of September 2022 from 13:30h to 20:00h (CEST). On the 18th of September the workshops/SIGs will run face-to-face in the venue of the ECCB2022 in Sitges (Barcelona, Spain). Each day there will be two 3-hour slots running up to two workshops in parallel.

Time (CEST)	Details
13:30 – 16:30	Workshops/SIGs slot I (x2 parallel sessions)
16:30 – 17:00	Break between workshops/SIGs
17:00 – 20:00	Workshops/SIGs slot II (x2 parallel sessions)

Time (CEST)	Details
09:00 – 10:30	Workshops/SIGs slot I – Part 1 (x2 parallel sessions)
10:30 – 11:00	Coffee break
11:00 – 12:30	Workshops/SIGs slot I – Part 2 (x2 parallel sessions)
12:30 – 13:30	Lunch Break
13:30 – 15:00	Workshops/SIGs slot II – Part 1 (x2 parallel sessions)
15:00 – 15:30	Coffee break
13:30 – 17:00	Workshops/SIGs slot II – Part 2 (x2 parallel sessions)

The workshops/SIGs registration fees will be published in the next few weeks. 

The virtual workshops/SIGs fees will be used to cover the costs for the streaming and online participation services. As for the registration in the face-to-face workshops/SIGs sessions, the fees will serve to provide the rooms’ rent and equipment, coffee breaks and lunch.

Note that the organisers are responsible for ensuring that the material they submit for downloading may be legally used, and that appropriate copyright permissions have been obtained. The speakers will grant distribution and reproduction rights of the workshop/SIGs materials to ECCB2022 from proposal acceptance through December 2022, and they agree that their materials may be made available in any form by the conference to the participants of the ECCB2022.

If the organisers choose to grant publishing permission of the recording of their session to the ECCB2022, the workshop sessions will be filmed on video and made available to all the attendees through the virtual platform. Unless stated otherwise, the videos will be published in the ISCB.tv Youtube public channel from the 1st of January 2023. The organisers who choose to give their consent to the ECCB2022 for the publication of the recorded session will do it under the most updated Creative Commons License (CC-BY 4.0) and are responsible to collect all presenter’s consent for the publication of the recording.

For more information please contact the technical secretariat: eccb2022@bcocongresos.com