10 Oct Intro UBC newsletter October 2019
While preparing the third newsletter of 2019 we were both excited and grieved. The news that Ben Hesper passed away in July saddened us. We mourn this loss, and we wish to express our condolences to all he inspired. Besides the personal loss, Ben’s passing also engenders mixed feelings in preparing the events for the year to come, as it will be packed with lots of activities.
Next year, we will mark the 50th anniversary of Paulien Hogeweg and Ben Hesper together coining the term ‘bioinformatics’. During this celebratory 50th birthday of bioinformatics, we will schedule a variety of events to highlight the development and importance of bioinformatics within life science research and the societal impact the field has had.
In addition to ’50 years of bioinformatics’, we are also proud to say that we will be organising the national bioinformatics and systems biology conference BioSB2020 on April 21 and 22, and that the new Master’s programme ‘Bioinformatics & BioComplexity’ will begin in September 2020. The programme will cover a broad spectrum of computational biology, from bioinformatics to systems biology.
More information about many of these events and activities can be found below. Happy reading!
On behalf of the UBC executive board,
Patrick Kemmeren