[BC]2 features inspiring keynote lectures by international experts as well as presentations of the latest scientific results and methods in the field. Registrations are open until 4 September.


Download the programme overview

Programme overview

[BC]is organized in Basel as an in-person conference - with a virtual component - to enjoy great science together, network and develop relationships during social activities. All speakers and oral presenters will be presenting live, in-person at the congress venue. 

The [BC] Scientific Committee has put together a diverse programme featuring inspiring keynote lectures by international experts, scientific presentations from selected abstracts, tutorials and workshops to foster hands-on capabilities and interactive poster sessions together with networking activities to refresh the mind and connect with peers in a friendly atmosphere!

For participants who are unable to travel or do not wish to travel for environmental reasons, there is the possibility to register as a virtual participant. Virtual participation only includes access to the opening keynote lecture on 11 September and the conference sessions on 12 and 13 September (live streamed, not recorded) and access to the meeting’s virtual poster platform, it does not include access to the pre-conference workshops and tutorials.

Download the short programme as a pdf

A few impressions from the previous [BC]2 Basel Computational Biology Conference!


Deciphering ecology and evolution with creative genomics approaches

Session chairs: Roman Arguello and Claudia Bank

Session description: The ever-growing diversity in sequencing technologies, along with their decreased costs, has promoted new and innovative experimental designs for answering questions in ecology and evolution. In addition to their application to model species/systems, considerable promise comes from their application to non-model species and lesser or difficult-to-study systems. This symposium will showcase discoveries achieved by leveraging novel and creative sampling, sequencing, and analysis approaches in evolutionary and ecological genomics to understand the most pressing questions within the field. Potential examples include ultra-low coverage sequencing of many individuals for the inference of haplotypes and population histories or the inference of biological diversity from minimal environmental DNA samples.

Topic includes but is not limited to: Population genetics, metagenomics, molecular and experimental evolution, phylogenetics, phylogenomics, comparative genomics, population structure, adaptation, individual-based models, population dynamics, coexistence, multi-species communities, community stability, community diversity, environmental DNA.

The invited speaker for this session is Kristy Deiner

Dynamics of immune processes: from responses to pathogens to immunotherapy

Session chairs: Marija Bulijan and Adrian Egli 

Session description: generation of large-scale datasets by new technologies accompanied by bioinformatics analyses is currently transforming the study of immune processes. Together with computational and mathematical models, this research supports novel insights into the diversity and specificity of immune responses and allows for the mechanistic understanding of the underlying processes. This session aims to cover work that spans from the characterization of host-pathogen interactions and microbiome’s dynamics to dysregulations of immune system in autoimmune diseases and immune deficiencies as well orchestration of the immune’s response to cancer. 

Topic includes but is not limited to: immunity, immunogenetics, systems immunology, immunotherapy, computational immunology, immune dynamics, infectious diseases, multiscale modeling, immuno-oncology.

The invited speaker for this session is Ido Amit

Machine Learning algorithms for advancing spatial biology

Session chairs: Maria Brbic and Raphael Gottardo

Session description: over the past two decades, the world of biomedical research has undergone a fast digital transformation, representing both a challenge and an opportunity. This is particularly true in biomedical imaging, where recent advances in sequencing- and imaging-based approaches have led to spatial transcriptomics and spatial proteomics, enabling the unbiased quantification and localization of genes or proteins throughout a given tissue. The resulting data can then be analyzed to generate critical insights from patient samples (e.g., tumor biopsies). These insights can, for example, help select cancer treatment options and identify mechanisms of response and relapse to a specific treatment. Despite their extraordinary potential, spatial datasets present significant challenges for analysis. Spatial experiments generate large and complex datasets requiring specialized computational tools able to leverage the spatial structure of cells in a tissue. This session aims to discuss open computational problems in spatial biology and present recent machine-learning algorithms to decipher tissue structure and cellular organization using spatial data.

Topic includes but is not limited to: artificial intelligence, medical and biological data science, machine learning methods and applications, computer vision, medical imaging, tumor biology, data integration.

The invited speaker for this session is Jean Fan.

Precision medicine: harnessing big data for cancer and other complex diseases

Session chairs: Valentina Boeva and Charlotte Ng

Session description: clinical implementation of the promises of precision medicine in oncology and complex diseases requires in-depth molecular characterization of patient samples and robust data analysis tools. To face this challenge, new experimental and computational technologies are being developed to characterize the genomic, transcriptomic, and other molecular characteristics of profiled samples. This session aims at covering the latest technological and computational developments in this fast-evolving field.

Topic includes but is not limited to: precision medicine, novel methods for cancer data analysis, multi-omics data integration, single-cell data analysis methods for cancer and complex diseases.

The invited speaker for this session is Sohrab Shah 

Proteins in 3D: the dynamics of protein structures and their interactions

Session chairs: Xavier Deupi and Torsten Schwede

Session description: the folding of proteins into their biologically functional 3D structures is a complex and sensitive process that is crucial to their activity. Accordingly, misfolded proteins are linked to a variety of malfunctions and diseases. Due to the importance of protein 3D structures and their dynamics for their activity, huge efforts have gone into their prediction and determination. With recent breakthroughs by deep-learning based methods such as AlphaFold, highly accurate protein structure predictions have become available for a large part of the protein universe. This session aims at highlighting some of the recent advances in protein structure determination and prediction and to exploring new opportunities that are becoming possible by the interplay between computational and experimental approaches..

Topic includes but is not limited to: protein structure determination, protein structure prediction,  computational and experimental approaches to study protein complexes, ligand and co-factor interactions, protein dynamics, disorder and denaturation, post-translational modifications, benchmarking of computational approaches.nal modification sites, structures of protein complexes, determination of ligand and co-factor interactions.

The invited speaker for this session is Paola Picotti

Methods in single-cell data analysis: from pre-processing to biological inference

Session chairs: Santiago Carmona and Marianna Rapsomaniki

Session description: single-cell technologies are revolutionizing biomedical research, enabling characterization of biological systems at an unprecedented scale and resolution. Robust computational methods are the backbone of this revolution. In this session, we invite submission of abstracts discussing new computational methods to process and interpret high-throughput single-cell/single-nucleus data, including scRNA-seq, scATAC-seq, scDNA-seq, CyTOF, high-dimensional flow cytometry – and multi-omics approaches that combine multiple assays.

Topic includes but is not limited to: normalization, clustering, dimensionality reduction, data representation & visualization, cell type classification, temporal dynamics, gene regulatory and cell communication networks, batch-effects correction, lineage tracing, perturbation analysis, and multi-modal data integration.

The invited speaker for this session is Dominic Grün

Industry-academia collaborations from scientific and contractual perspectives

Session chairs: Madiha Derouazi and Vincent Zoete  

Session description: industry-academia collaborations are an important driver for innovation, scientific excellence and technology transfers. The first part of the session will be dedicated to the organisation and contractual aspects to establish collaborations between academia and industry. The second part of the session will showcase concrete examples of collaborations. Companies of all sizes and researchers are invited to present their joint projects and interdisciplinary collaborations. In particular, the session will discuss how to enable communication between people with different expertise and backgrounds, what are the challenges and the advantages of such collaborations, and what can be done to increase opportunities. It also aims at discussing how researchers can better target company intentions on the one hand, and on the other hand, how can company researchers better leverage academic skills and technologies.