German/Russian Network of Computational Systems Biology

Since 1998, Prof. Kolchanov [Institute of Cytology and Genetics (SB RAS), Novosibirsk] and Prof. Hofestädt (Bielefeld University) have been organizing bilateral and international summer schools, workshops and conferences (notably, the biannual conference, Bioinformatics of Genome Regulation and Structure in Novosibirsk since 1998). Based on this cooperation, the German/Russian Network of Computational Systems Biology (\vw\v.imbio.de/forschung/) was established in 2005. The network has been organized to facilitate collaborative investigation and education in Bioinformatics and Systems Biology between German and Russian researchers. The interlinking research topic was Analysis and simulation of biomolecular systems and processes. The main goal of this cooperation was knowledge-transfer and the initiation of bilateral projects. Furthermore, this network has provided a platform for educational programs, exchange of young researchers, e-learning, seminars, workshops and summer school programs. The network is supported by the German Ministry of Science (BMBF) and the Russian Ministry of Science and as of 2007 it has become a sub-network of German/Russian Network Biotechnology (\V\vw.bis-rus.com). The most important goal of our network is to bring together young scientists and students from both countries to initiate new projects and startups. Therefore, since 2008 we have organized a regular German/Russian annual summer school in Russia and Germany. The overall research topic of all these activities was called Integrative Bioinformatics (IB). Jointly, we have organized the first Integrative Bioinformatics conference in 2005 in Bielefeld and also founded the online Journal of Integrative Bioinformatics (http://journal.imbio.de/). The next annual IB conference will take place in the Netherlands in 2011 and all accepted papers will be published again by the JIB. The startup company PBsoft (http://www.pbiosoft.com/), was founded in Novosibirsk in 2007. This company develops new computational technologies in bioinformatics and systems biology (ANDvisio, ANDcell). To further facilitate the development of bilateral projects, the network partners have recently founded a Russian/German Research Center for Integrative Biology and Computation (RCIBC) in Novosibirsk 2010. This center will focus on the analysis of genetic control of metabolic networks, which is a backbone of Systems and Synthetic Biology.