StatSeq Working Group 1 Meeting, Vienna, 24--26 March 2011

The ESF COST action TD0801 Working Group 1 this year meets in Vienna for a workhop on RNA-Seq (24/25 March) and a strategy session for identifying opportunities for collaboration and applications for joint funding (26 March).

Points for discussion by the Management Committee

Proposed structure:

  1. 3 invited speakers confirmed:
    1. Hannes Ponstingl (SSAHA2+SMALT; Sanger Centre, Cambridge, UK)

    2. José Jiménéz-Gomez (RNA-Seq in tomato and relatives, Max-Planck-Institute Köln, Germany; recommended by Gerard van der Linden)

    3. Micha Sammeth (quantification of RNASeq, National Center for Genomic Analysis, Barcelona; recommended by Roderic Guigo)

  2. 4-5 contributing speakers (reimbursed 3 nights) - this can include MC members, other academics, and students or early stage researchers. Call for contributions is OPEN.

    1. We could select the best submission each for a number of categories.
    2. Shall we "reserve" 3 slots for students and early stage researchers?
  3. 4-10 contributing speakers (own expenses).

We can accommodate 40-80 delegates.

If we want to keep enough time for informal discussion, I think we can have:

  • 09.15 - welcome
  • 09.30 - 1 keynote
  • 10.30 - 1 contributed talk
  • 11.00 - break
  • 11.30 - 1 contributed talk (session lead, reimbursed)
  • 12.00 - 1 contributed talk (could be: 2)
  • 12.30 - lunch
  • 14.00 - 1 keynote
  • 15.00 - 1 contributed talk
  • 15.30 - break
  • 16.00 - 1 contributed talk (session lead, reimbursed)
  • 16.30 - 2 contributed talks (could be: 3)

giving per day: 2 keynotes, 2 session leads, 3-5 other talks, depending on the number of submissions. We might actually struggle to fill the program on such short notice (< 2 months!)

We propose to reimburse invited speakers from outside Europe for 4 nights, everyone else for 3 nights. This should be possible by closing the meeting early p.m. on Saturday.

We propose to provide on-site catering for lunch and cover the costs for that through a work-shop fee (aiming not to exceed the COST reimbursement amounts). Marco - I assume your office can deal with registration / finances!

We would be most grateful for feedback and suggestions by everone on content and structure, esp. a ranking of potential speakers to invite!

Best wishes,

David & Petri

Proposed topics

  1. What have we learned from applying RNA-Seq to complex tissues / organisms as complex as plants?
    1. Novel biological insights
    2. Current experimental challenges
    3. Recent advances in computational analysis (processing, identifying biologically relevant signals, statistics, ...)
    4. Current computational challenges
  2. What have we learned from calibrating and validating RNA-Seq?
    1. Recent methodological advances
    2. Benchmarks and comparisons (variant protocols or relative to other technologies)
    3. Current methodological challenges
    4. Recent advances in computational analysis (processing, bias removal, calibration, ...)
    5. Current computational challenges

Organization

  • Registration, accounting and ESF admin: Office of Marco Bink
  • Programme committee: = TD0801 Management Committee

  • Session chairs: David Kreil & Petri Auvinen

  • Local organizers: Paweł Łabaj, Smriti Shridhar