From pkarp@ai.sri.com Fri Jan 21 16:44:34 EST 1994 Article: 20318 of comp.ai Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai:20318 Path: honeydew.srv.cs.cmu.edu!bb3.andrew.cmu.edu!news.sei.cmu.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!hplabs!unix.sri.com!unix.sri.com!pkarp From: pkarp@ai.sri.com (Peter Karp) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Meeting on Interconnection of Molecular Biology Databases Date: 19 Jan 94 14:44:45 Organization: SRI International, Menlo Park, CA Lines: 182 Distribution: comp Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: bolinas.ai.sri.com ***************** CALL FOR PARTICIPATION ***************** Meeting on the Interconnection of Molecular Biology Databases August 9-12, 1994 Stanford University Organizer DEADLINES Peter D. Karp, SRI International Abstracts due March 11, 1994 Program Committee Robert Robbins, Johns Hopkins U Chris Fields, TIGR David George, NBRF Tim Finin, U of Maryland George Michaels, George Mason U Michel Noordewier, Rutgers U Chris Overton, U of Pennsylvania Susan Davidson, U of Pennsylvania Dan Davison, U of Houston Xiaolei Qian, SRI International Robert Murphy, Carnegie-Mellon U Richard Lathrop, MIT Victor Markowitz, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory A meeting on the Interconnection of Molecular Biology Databases will take place at Stanford University in the San Francisco Bay Area, August 9-12, 1994. The meeting will bring together biologists, computer scientists, and bioinformatics researchers who are interested in the problem of interoperation of the growing number of distributed, heterogeneous databases and knowledge bases that serve molecular biology and genome researchers. The premise behind this meeting is that the roughly 100 existing molecular biology databases will be of much greater value to molecular biologists when interconnected than in their current isolated states. There is tremendous synergy between electronic data repositories in molecular biology; once they are interconnected, scientists will be able to integrate diverse sources of information to answer questions that are laborious or impossible to tackle today. Interoperation of heterogeneous databases is a hot research topic in computer science. This meeting is an exciting opportunity for bioinformatics workers to learn about recent advances in computer science, and for computer scientists to acquire a set of challenge problems in a real-world domain. Molecular biology databases have complex semantics, and utilize diverse data models and platforms, thereby providing a rich testbed for newly developed techniques for interoperation. The subject matter of the meeting will include, but will not be limited to, the following topics: o Query languages for multidatabase queries o Tools for schema management and schema integration o Approaches to interconversion among data models and data formats o Tradeoffs between tight and loose database integration o Intelligent software agents for locating information in the biomatrix o Relevant standards activities o Understanding the schemas of existing molecular biology databases o Properties of existing molecular biology databases that impose constraints on their interconnection o Research problems in biology that would benefit from database interconnection o Current computer science research projects involving interconnection of heterogeneous databases o Current research projects in interconnection of molecular biology databases o Organizational impediments and motivations for interconnection The central goals of the meeting are to stimulate discussion, exchange of ideas, and interdisciplinary research projects between computer scientists who work in the area of interconnecting heterogeneous databases, and the biologists and bioinformatics researchers who develop and use molecular biology databases. Computer scientists will learn about the properties of existing databases and the requirements that bioinformatics researchers will have for interconnection. The participants will identify challenge queries and computations of interest that span multiple databases. Bioinformatics researchers will be exposed to technologies and research directions for interconnection that are under development by computer science researchers. A second, more practical goal of the meeting is to work toward development of a global, multi-database schema for existing molecular biology databases, that is, to encode the schemas of a variety of molecular biology databases in a common representation. Creation of a global schema is one possible first step toward interconnecting these databases, and will be a valuable exercise for learning about and evaluating existing tools for the management of database schemas. Participants will attack this problem during working sessions at the meeting. Participants will attempt to encode the schemas of several molecular biology databases using schema-definition systems such as OPM (the Object-Protocol Model -- an object-oriented system-independent data model developed at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory), and Ontolingua (a knowledge sharing tool under development at Stanford University). Participation in the meeting will be by invitation, based on abstracts submitted by prospective participants. Abstracts should be 2-4 pages in length and should consist of a description of past or current research or research interests (e.g., an overview of an approach to database interoperation) or a position statement by the applicant (e.g., a description of a biological problem that could be solved given facile access to multiple databases). Some participants will be selected to give talks or poster presentations at the meeting, and the submitted abstracts will be distributed as a collection at the meeting. Please submit abstracts electronically to the address mimbd-abstracts@ai.sri.com; abstracts must be composed using the template at the end of this message. A limited amount of financial support for participant's travel and lodging costs for has been provided by the National Science Foundation and the Biomatrix Society. Please indicate at the top of the submitted abstract whether you require support. Actual support provided may not cover participants full costs, and will be based on the number of requests, and the total expenses and distance traveled by each attendee. The MIMBD meeting will directly precede the Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology, which will be held at Stanford from August 15-17, 1994. This arrangement will allow attendees of both meetings to combine travel expenses. For information on ISMB-94, send mail to ismb@nlm.nih.gov. Peter D. Karp, Ph.D. Artificial Intelligence Center SRI International 333 Ravenswood Ave, EJ 229 Menlo Park, CA 94025 voice: 415-859-6375 fax: 415-859-3735 pkarp@ai.sri.com Important dates: Abstracts must be submitted by March 11, 1994. Notification of accepted abstracts and travel awards by April 29, 1994. Final formatted abstracts due by June 15, 1994. Application Form Please edit the for below to include the requested information, and send the completed form by electronic mail to the address mimbd-abstracts@ai.sri.com. ---------------------------- cut here ------------------------ Name: Institution: Surface mail address: Email address: Fax telephone number: Voice telephone number: Do you request travel support? YES / NO What type of presentation would you like to make? TALK / POSTER / NEITHER Include a 2-4 page abstract in the space below as simple ASCII text with no embedded formatting commands (authors will later resubmit accepted abstracts for inclusion in a simple workshop proceedings).