Call for Highlights Submissions
2021 ACM-BCB Conference – August 1-4, 2021 (Virtual)

The 12^th ACM Conference on Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, and Health Informatics (ACM-BCB) is the flagship conference of the ACM SIGBio. The 2021 ACM- BCB conference is the premier conference that is dedicated to interdisciplinary research linking computer science, mathematics, statistics, biology, medicine, bioinformatics, and biomedical and health informatics. ACM-BCB focuses on the grand challenges for life science, bioscience and human health by showcasing cutting-edge research on new technologies, methods, and tools around the processing, integration, analysis, mining, retrieval, and interpretation of biological, medical and health data with the aim of solving problems in life science, biomedical discovery, public and population health, disease prevention, and healthcare delivery.

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the conference and all its associated events will be held virtually this year.

In addition to full papers for the proceedings, we are soliciting abstracts for the Highlights Track, based on relevant papers published after January 1, 2021, or papers that are in press at the time of submission and are already available electronically through a journal web site. Presentations will be selected based on the following criteria: impact of the work on the field, likelihood that the presentation will be of general interest for the audience, and relevance of the topic to computational biology or biomedical research.

Authors of accepted abstracts for the Highlights Track are expected to register for the conference and present their work at a virtual session.

Submission Format

Interested authors should submit a single document with the following information:

• Name, affiliation, and contact email of the presenting author.
• Bibliographic information of the published paper, including a stable URL.
• Abstract from the published paper, for review purposes only.
• Abstract for the highlights presentation, for publication in the proceedings.

The document should cover the following:

• Summary of the advances in the paper, emphasizing relevance to the BCB community
• Description of the broader implications of the methods and results presented in the paper
• Future directions and new questions raised by the paper

In addition, if the paper is not freely available from the publisher or pubmed, a pdf must be attached for review purposes.

Submission Procedure

Submissions are handled via EasyChair (select “Highlights Track”).

Note that all co-authors of the presented papers must agree to the submission. It is the responsibility of the submitter to enter all co-author email addresses during the submission process. Email notifications of the submission will be sent to all co-authors.

Important Dates:

Submission deadline: May 10, 2021
Acceptance notification: June 14, 2021

Highlights Chair

Xiaoqian Jiang, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston