18th Meeting of the International Study group for Systems Biology

The international study group of systems biology (ISGSB) is organizing a biannual conference series. ISGSB conferences are well established and ISGSB2018 will be the 18th conference of this series that has a growing number of participants both from theoretical and experimental sciences. ISGSB conferences traditionally aim at giving preferentially PhD students and young postdoctoral researchers the chance to present their results. The ISGSB board that acts as scientific advisory board of the conference series, has during its last meeting in October 2016 decided to give Norway the possibility to host the ISGSB2018, if sufficient funding can be acquired to reduce conference fees. Ines Heiland from The Arctic University of Norway, who is at present the only Norwegian ISGSB board member, has been selected to act as chair of ISGSB2018. As the ISGSB board wants to include participants from low income countries, where excellent systems biology groups are located (e.g. Eastern European Countries and South Africa), the final decision about the conference location will depend on sufficient funding. Thus, event support through the BIOTEK2021 program will be essential to host the ISGSB2018 in Norway and thus enable a stronger involvement in international research in systems biology for biotechnology and systems medicine. Systems biology approaches are the core of strategic initiative Digital Life Norway (DLN) that shall provide innovation for biotechnology through interdisciplinary research. The importance for the DLN initiative is reflected by the fact that 2 members of the organizing committee are leading or member of the work group on Competence and Infrastructure of DLN and one of the organizers is involved in one of the DLN projects.