VISUALIZING BIOLOGICAL DATA VIZBI

For VIZBI and Masterclass participants, we have negotiated a limited number of rooms at a very discounted conference rate of $299 per night at Kimpton Marlowe Hotel, which is a 10 minute walk from the Broad Institute. The hotel comes highly-recommended, and many of the VIZBI speakers and organizers will be staying at the Marlowe; thus, participants are encouraged to join us there.

To take advantage of the conference rate, click this link or contact Lauren Hendy at the Marlowe (Lauren.Hendy@hotelmarlowe.com; Telephone 617-395-2556).

The poster upload deadline has now been extended until on 23:00 ETD on March 14, 2018. Note that the link for uploading your poster is sent after you register for the conference with Eventbrite. Click here for more details.

The VIZBI 2018 keynote address on user experience design will be given by Kim Goodwin. Kim has decades of experience in user research and design, leading teams of varying sizes, and teaching design & leadership skills. She led an integrated practice of interaction, visual, and industrial designers as VP & GM at Cooper for 12 years and served as VP of Product and User Experience at PatientsLikeMe. To learn more about her work, you can watch her previous talk on designing how we design.

The VIZBI 2018 keynote on communicating science visually will be given by Dr. Drew Berry – a biomedical animator who combines cinema and science to reveal the microscopic worlds inside our bodies. His animations have been shown in exhibitions, multimedia programs, and television shows. He received many awards and commendations including an Emmy, a BAFTA, and the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. He collaborated with the musician Björk for the 2011 album Biophilia for which he directed the music video Hollow, which was also used in the Hollow app. To learn more about his work, you can watch his TEDx talk on animations on unseeable biology.

The VIZBI 2018 keynote address on data visualisation principles will be given by Prof. Anders Ynnerman. Andres is currently chair of scientific visualization at Linking University; he is also director of the Norrköping Visualization Centre C, one of the leading Nordic institutions in computer graphics and visualization. His research is focused on the visualisation of large scale and complex data sets via the use of volume rendering and multi-modal interaction. To learn more about his work, you can watch his TEDx talk on Visualizing the medical data explosion.

Due to network interruptions, we have now extended the deadline for the early registration discount to February 28. After this date, all conference tickets increase by $150. Note that the poster upload deadline has also been extended to March 7.

Note that early registration for VIZBI 2018 closes February 23, 23:00 CET. To secure your ticket before prices rise, go to the VIZBI registration page.

We are pleased to announce the complete speaker lineup for VIZBI 2018. These 21 world-leading researchers will showcase visualizations transforming how life scientists view data.

Keynotes: Kim Goodwill, Drew Berry, Anders Ynnerman. DNA: Marcin Imielinski, Aaron Wong, Nils Gehlenborg. RNA: Joanna Trylska, Eric Lecuyer, Kristin Ardlie. Proteins: Ivan Viola, Jodie Jenkinson, Sameer Velankar. Cells: Bree Aldridge, Devin Sullivan, Scooter Morris. Tissues: Richard Smith, Lydia Gregg, James Michaelson. Populations: Antonio González Peña, Daniel Janies, Patrick Chain.

In conjunction with VIZBI 2018, we are excited to announce the Data Visualization Masterclass, a one-day tour of state-of-the-art methods, taught by internationally acknowledged experts in data visualization happening on Tuesday, March 27, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm at the Kimpton Marlowe Hotel (~10 mins walk from the Broad Institute). The masterclass will teach you the principles and practices for turning data into insightful visualizations that tell compelling stories. The class is for anyone working with data, including communicators, scientists, programmers, designers, and visual artists. The masterclass will feature highly acclaimed international speakers: Kim Goodwin and Drew Berry.

The VIZBI 2018 program is now online: this year’s meeting at the Broad Institute features keynotes on user experience design, visual communication of biology, and data visualization principles from Kim Goodwin, Drew Berry, and Anders Ynnerman. In addition, talks from 18 leading researchers will review how data visualization is being used to transform key areas of research in the life sciences. Sign up soon to take advantage of the early registration discount, which closes February 23.

VIZBI 2018, the 9th international meeting on ‘Visualizing Biological Data’, will take place March 28-30 at the Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard in Cambridge MA.

VIZBI 2018 features keynotes from Kim Goodwin, Drew Berry, and Anders Ynnerman, as well as talks from 18 world-leading researchers showcasing visualizations transforming how life scientists view data, and driving key advances in molecular biology, systems biology, biomedical science, and ecology.

The meeting aims to advance data visualization in the life sciences and brings together a diverse community, including bioinformaticians, data scientists, computer scientists, and experimentalists, as well as medical illustrators, graphic designers, and graphic artists.

All participants have the opportunity to present a poster and a lightning talk describing their work. Note that this year we are not able to offer a virtual participation option.

Data Visualization Masterclass. One day prior to the meeting (March 27), there will also be full-day training event teaching general principles and practices for turning data into insightful visualisations. Further details will be announced shortly.

Sponsorship. If you are interested in promoting your organization or professional society, a range of sponsorship options are also available.

As with previous meetings, VIZBI 2018 promises to be an exciting event that will again help raise the standard of data visualization in the life sciences. We hope very much you can join us!

In an article published today, VIZBI founders Sean O’Donoghue (CSIRO, Garvan & UNSW, Australia) and James Procter (University of Dundee, UK) outline why they created the meeting series. In short: they were motivated from their experiences in using data visualisation principles to create bioinformatics tools. The article appeared in The Conversation, which publishes news sourced from researchers, and allows articles to be freely accessed and republished.

John Salamon, Xiaoyan Qian, Mats Nilsson and David Lynn collaborative work ‘Network visualisation & analysis of in situ sequencing data with InsituNet’ won the NVIDIA Best Scientific Poster Award, based on popular vote by VIZBI 2017 participants. Congratulations to the team – they received a Quadro M6000 video card.

This year, the Autodesk Art and Biology Award went to Anna Hupalowska (University of Cambridge, United Kingdom) for Synchronised swimmers as an analogy to embryo development. This submission highlights the stage where a mammalian embryo undergoes a series of morphogenetic changes leading to a developmental transition which is presented as an analogy to synchronized swimming. The Autodesk award is for the most popular VIZBI Art and Biology submission, and the winner receives a one-year subscription to Autodesk Maya. Congratulations, Anna!

Can’t make all 3-days of the conference? You have the option of registering for a Single Day Pass. Tickets are available here.

Can’t come to Sydney for VIZBI 2017? You have the option of virtual participation, which gives access to a video stream covering all conference talks live, and also available offline after the talks. You can participate by typing in questions for speakers, which are passed to the session chair during question period at the end of each talk.

There are six tutorials to choose from on 13 June 2017 at The University of Sydney, Australia.
Morning:

• Variant Data, Alignments, Structures and Jalview (Geoff Barton & Jim Procter)
• Exploratory Visual and Computational Genomic Data Analysis with Epiviz (Hector Corrado-Brava)
• Learn Data Visualization in R: a Hands-on Journey Through the Do’s and Don’ts of Effective Graphmanship (Nenad Bartonicek)

Afternoon:

• Protein Network Visualization with Cytoscape and STRING (Lars Juhl Jensen & Jessica Xin Hu)
• Integrating Compelling Narrative and Storytelling into your DataViz (Paul Hodge)
• Analysis of Atomic Force Microscopy Data from Biological Samples (Siobhan Braybrook)

In response to several requests, the deadline for uploading a scientific posters or art & biology submission has been extended to June 4, 23:59 PST. To find the upload link, please see the email sent to you confirming your registration.

Eric Lander, the president and founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard gave the opening remarks for VIZBI 2011. He presented a compelling case for why a focus on data visualization is urgently needed in modern biological research and education. A video of Eric’s opening speech can be viewed here.

Visualization is increasingly important in life science as data grows rapidly in volume and complexity. The VIZBI initiative is an international conference series started in 2010 which took place alternating in Europe and the USA. On our 8th year, VIZBI will be staged in Australia for the first time, each meeting has had outstanding feedback from attendees, and the most recent (VIZBI 2016) was featured in a Nature News article. To get a flavor of what happens at a VIZBI conference, watch this video from a previous VIZBI (2014) meeting.