SocBiN- Society for Bioinformatics
in the Nordic countries

Notes from the annual general meeting
Bioinformatics 2003,

May 25, 2003

HOTEL KALASTAJATORPPA,

Helsinki, Finland

• Opening

  • As president of the SocBiN, Bo Servenius welcomed to the meeting

• Meeting Election

  • Bo Servenius was elected as leader of the meeting

  • Inge Jonassen was elected as responsible for writing notes from the meeting. Notes to be signed by Mauno Vihinen and Nikolai Blom

• Reports from the board

  • the board has performed informal interactions mostly via email since last year’s annual meeting

  • the board sees a need to revitalise the website for the society (www.socbin.org)

  • the society has not yet been formally established . Economy is handled by an account at Karolinska Institutet by Bengt Persson – currently holding 19.202 SEK

  • Expenditures: web domain 1000 SEK (5 years)

  • Members: 376 with the following countries represented (counted by web domains of members):

    • SE 143

    • NO 50

    • DK 26

    • Fi 30

    • Is 35

    • Ee 17

    • Lv 1

    • Lt 7

    • com 94

    • org 14

• current board:

• Bo Servenius, president, 2000--2004, AstraZeneca Bioinformatics, Lund,  Bo.Servenius@astrazeneca.com

• Inge Jonassen, vice president, 2002--2005, Dept. of Informatics, University of Bergen, inge@ii.uib.no, http://www.ii.uib.no/~inge

• Bengt Persson, cashier, 2000--2003, Karolinska Institutet and Stockholm Bioinformatic Centre, bpn@mbb.ki.se

• Finn Drablos, 2000---2003, SINTEF Unimed, MR Centre, finn.drablos@unimed.sintef.no, http://www.sintef.no/

• Mark Johnson, 2000--2004, Graduate school in Informational and Structural Biochemistry,  Åbo Akademi University, johnson@abo.fi

• Tönu Margus, 2000--2003, Tartu University, Estonia, tmargus@ebc.ee

• Nikolaj Blom, 2001--2004, CBS, Copenhagen, nikob@cbs.dtu.dk

• Esko Ukkonen 2000--2003, Dept of Computer Science, Helsinki, ukkonen@cs.helsinki.fi

• Henrik Vissing, 2003--2005, Exiqon A/S, Vedbaek, vissing@exiqon.com

• Daniel Oskarsson, 2001--2004, deCODE genetics, Reykjavik, daniel@decode.is

• Elections – elected for the board
  It was suggested from the floor that if possible get some rotation on the board memberships to activate a larger member community. There were four positions open for elections – SE, NO, FI and Baltics. The following persons were elected:

  • Jens Lagergren, SBC, Stockholm (SE)

  • David Liberles, CBU, Bergen (NO)

  • Mauno Vihinen, Institute of Medical Technology, University of Tampere, Tampere (FI)

  • Maido Remm, Tartu University, Estonia (Baltics)

The retiring members of the board – Bengt, Finn and Tönu – were thanked for their work. Bengt’s work on helping out establishing the society was mentioned in particular.

• Arne Elofsson and Anders Krogh were re-elected as auditors

• Next year’s conference - proposal from Linköping university

  • Bengt Persson and Jesper Tegnér have submitted a proposal that is recommended by the board and Persson and Tegnér form the core of the organisation comittee

  • Tentative dates: May 5-8 or May 12-15

• Any other business

  • Suggestions and comments from the participants:

    • Wish to have noon-noon meeting, e.g., Thursday noon-Sunday noon

    • Wish for reduced rate for undergraduate students

    • More time and space for poster presentations – coffee and posters together

    • Tutorials together with meeting

    • Challenge: get women involved in SocBiN organisation – board, programme and organisation committees for meetings etc.

    • Debate of invited talks vs. contributed papers/talks – one suggestions for parallel sessions one afternoon to cover specialised areas with submitted short papers

Notes taken by

Inge Jonassen

Signed

Mauno Vihinen Nikolai Blom