Department Hosts 2023 Bioconductor North American Conference

Adapted from Bioconductor 2023 Press Release:

The North American conference of the Bioconductor project, BioC2023, took place in Boston at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute from August 2nd to 4th. The event drew a diverse audience, with 165 individuals attending in person and 332 participating virtually from across the globe.

Bioconductor seeks to develop, support, and disseminate free open source software that facilitates rigorous and reproducible analysis of data from current and emerging biological assays. The Department of Data Science at Dana-Farber is an annual co-host of the North American Bioconductor Conference.

This year’s conference featured notable keynote speakers such as JJ Allaire from Posit, Samantha Lent from Freenome, Jeffrey Moffit from Boston Children’s Hospital, Beth Cimini from the Broad Institute, Heng Li from DFCI, and Nancy Zhang from Penn.  The comprehensive conference included 49 concise presentations, 3 Birds of a Feather discussions, 16 package demonstrations, and 6 workshops, all covering a wide range of subjects and skill levels.

Recognizing excellence within the Bioconductor community, 2023 BioC Awards were conferred upon Matthew Ritchie, Susan Holmes, Simone Bell, and Constantin Ahlmann-Eltze for their remarkable contributions to the project and its community. These awards were determined based on nominations from the community and decided upon by the Bioconductor Community Advisory Board.

BioC provided 14 scholarships to students and postdocs, enabling them to attend the conference in-person in Boston. Additionally, they awarded 50 virtual scholarships to further extend access to the conference’s content.

Sponsors include Moderna, Microsoft Genomics, Ozette, Posit, Bluebirdbio, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Novartis, R Consortium, and StickerMule. Their support was instrumental in making this year’s conference a resounding success, benefiting both our attendees and the Bioconductor project as a whole.