LS2 Intersection Bioinformatics
What is bioinformatics?
Bioinformatics develops and applies computational methods to solve biological questions. Bioinformatics is a transversal discipline in that nearly all areas of Life Science have a bioinformatic component. In each of these domains of application, Bioinformatics accelerate progress through quantitative, integrative, and scalable methods. Conversely, Bioinformatics benefits from the "reality check" and new problems that arise in each domain.
What is SIB?
The SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics is an internationally recognized non-profit organization, dedicated to biological and biomedical data science. Its data scientists are passionate about creating knowledge and solving complex questions in many fields, from biodiversity and evolution to medicine. They provide essential databases and software platforms as well as bioinformatics expertise and services to academic, clinical, and industry groups. SIB federates the Swiss bioinformatics community of some 800 scientists, encouraging collaboration and knowledge sharing. The institute contributes to keeping Switzerland at the forefront of innovation by fostering progress in biological research and enhancing health.
Why this intersection?
The intersection was founded in June 2019, together with SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, materializing the fact that bioinformatics and life sciences feed from each other. Through activities determined by its board, this intersection aims to 1) create additional bridges between the two disciplines, 2) foster collaborations between SIB Members and LS2 Members, and 3) accelerate the development of methods and tools supporting the latest experimental developments.
The Bioinformatics Intersection welcomes any LS2 member willing to discover more about bioinformatics and participate in common activities.
Intersection Board
Katja Bärenfaller
SIB Group Leader, Head Molecular Allergology Group, Swiss Institute of Allergy and Asthma Research, SIAF
Carlos-Andrés Peña-Reyes
SIB Group Leader, Computational Intelligence for Computational Biology, HEIG-VD
Paulina Pacak
Deputy Head of Computational Chemistry, RDP Pharma AG
Zsolt Balázs
Senior Researcher, University of Zurich
Cheng Li
Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Zurich
How to join the LS2 Bioinformatics intersection?
Existing LS2 members can log in at www.ls2.ch, click on "Change the LS2 Sections you are in" and change to/add the new intersection "Bioinformatics".
New members can apply for the LS2 membership here and select "Intersection Bioinformatics" in the online application form.
When joining the Bioinformatics intersection, members agree that their personal data entered in the membership application form on the LS2 website will be shared between LS2 and SIB for purposes of newsletters, targeted announcements, and membership statistics. On that basis, LS2 shall send to SIB the up-to-date list of Bioinformatics intersection members on a monthly basis. This statement has been laid out in LS2 Terms & Conditions.
News and Events:
Attend our Symposium at LS2 Annual Meeting 2026
Our Symposium at LS2 Annual Meeting 2026 will be chaired by Katja Baerenfaller (SIAF and University of Zurich) and Claudia Lang (University Hospital Zurich): “Bioinformatics Driving the One Health Concept”
Speaker: Emma Hodcroft (Swiss TPH & University of Basel): "Pathoplexus: building a new kind of pathogen database"
Register by 11.01.2026.
The Meeting will take place on 11 & 12 February 2026 at Campus Irchel of the University of Zurich.
Call for the ECCB 2026 Tutorials & Workshops
The ECCB 2026 Tutorials & Workshops Committee invites proposals for on-site tutorials and workshops, taking place on Thursday, September 03, 2026. These sessions are intended to complement the scientific programme by providing opportunities for focused, in-depth exploration of timely topics, as well as training in emerging methods and tools relevant to computational biology, bioinformatics, and related disciplines.
The conference programme will be structured around five core scientific areas, each representing a major domain of research.
Submit your proposal by January 5, 2026. Find out more HERE.
Discover databases and software tools provided by SIB Groups to the global life science community. Find out more here.
Benefit from the SIB courses to hone your bioinformatics skills. Discover the latest advances in computational biology to explore biological data, from single-cell molecular insights to vaccine development and real-time pathogen tracking.
Expasy (https://www.expasy.org/), the bioinformatics resource portal of the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, connects the 160+ bioinformatics databases and software developed by SIB Groups and supporting research in proteomics, genomics, structural biology, evolution, systems biology, text mining.
With:
Alan James Bridge (Director, Swiss-Prot, SIB | Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics)
Talk: "Biocuration Matters: Harnessing AI to Model Biological Systems at PubMed Scale"
Abstract: Knowledge of how proteins functionally interact can inform studies of the dynamics of living systems – the subject of this BioMatters meeting – but much of this knowledge remains locked in peer-reviewed publications and is not accessible to researchers nor machines. Expert curation of open knowledgebases such as UniProt makes this knowledge FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable), but human curation is costly and difficult to scale to cover the entire body of peer-reviewed literature. In this presentation we will look at efforts to model biological systems in forms that are FAIR using resources such as UniProt, the Gene Ontology, and Rhea, how human-in-the-loop AI-assisted curation can help us build those models more efficiently, and how we can integrate biological models, knowledge, and high throughput ‘omics datasets using semantic web technologies to create new biological knowledge and insights.
