On 10-11 March 2022 the 4th edition of Applied Bioinformatics in Life Sciences took place in Leuven. After 2 years of (mostly) virtual meetings, we were happy to be united again in the vibrant city of Leuven to discuss innovative computational approaches in the field of applied bioinformatics. The people who could not attend live in Leuven, had the opportunity to follow the talks via a streaming platform.
This edition featured recent developments in bioinformatics research, and highlighted the power of computational biology in medical, agricultural, and biotechnology research.
New this edition was the addition of the Image Analysis field. The other sessions covered the topics Single Cell Analysis, Proteomics & Metabolomics, and Data Integration.
To support upcoming scientists and provide them with the opportunity to present their research, 6 short talks were included in the program, which were selected from the submitted abstracts. On top of that, young researchers had the chance to present their work during the poster sessions. At least 70 poster abstracts were presented!
During the conference our two conference reporters Annelies Emmaneel @EmmaneelA and Ruth Seurinck @RuthSeurinck live tweeted about the talks. You can check out their profiles to have an overview of the talks or you can get all the impressions via #ABLS22 on Twitter.
Here's a short overview of our conference reporters:
Ruth Seurinck - VIB-UGent Center for Inflammation Research, BE
"The Applied Bionformatics in the Life Science conference has given a great overview of the diversity within bioinformatics. It is still the place-to-be if you want to know how to get the most out of your imaging, single-cell, proteomics or metabolomics data. But it is also much more than high-level algorithms to unravel biological processes. Bioinformaticians are at the forefront of Open Science, from sharing their algorithms and pipelines to generating and leveraging public data resources. There was even an example of how a bioinformatics tool can be used to enable everyone to contribute to the segmentation of biomedical data, a truly inspiring example of Citizen Science!"
Annelies Emmaneel - VIB-UGent Center for Inflammation Research, BE
"It was proven once again that there is much to discover in the bioinformatics field during the Applied Bioinformatics in the Life Sciences conference. An excellent line-up of experts addressed the challenges and the accomplishments in the image, single-cell, proteomics and metabolomics fields and some of them went even deeper and discussed how we can integrate all these diverse datasets. We had two days full of fantastic bioinformatics research where the science not only took place on stage but where it was also discussed during the two poster sessions and the coffee and lunch breaks."
Some feedback from the attendees:
"A great networking opportunity with young people in the field." - Nils Eling (University of Zurich, CH)
"ABLS22 had plenty of interesting presentations in the single cell field which were very enlightening." - Clint De Nolf (VIB-UGent Center for Inflammation Research, BE)
"Well organized, easy to navigate and fruitful discussions." - Patrick Rölli (10x Genomics, SE)
"Great talks and nice environment to share ideas." - Giulia Brunelli (Università degli studi di Siena, IT)
You can find some impressions of the conference here.