Towards improved modeling of living organisms

Some 30 scientists working in the field of bioinformatics will gather in Barcelona from today until Wednesday to discuss their research and findings in the international conference ‘Grand Challenges in Computational Biology’. Held at the Institut d’Estudis Catalans (IEC), the conference was opened this morning by the Minister for Innovation, Universities and Commerce of the Generalitat de Catalunya, Josep Huguet, the president of the IEC, Salvador Giner, the director of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), Mateo Valero, and the director of the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), Joan Guinovart.

This international conference seeks to present bioinformatics as a multidisciplinary field, in which tools for microscopic, mesoscopic and macroscopic simulations are used to study the behaviour of living organisms.

A further objective established by the members of the Organising Committee, headed by Modesto Orozco, professor at the University of Barcelona, researcher at IRB Barcelona and director of Life Sciences at the BSC, is to provide a forum in which researchers working in bioinformatics can discuss challenges in this field and put forwards how solutions can be reached through new equipment and programmes.

According to Modesto Orozco, "this conference is an excellent opportunity to bring together leading researchers in bioinformatics, experts in the future development of supercomputation and leaders of the most relevant European projects in this field. We believe that the conclusions from the conference will allow us to more efficiently focus on the challenges posed by the simulation of living organisms."