Genome Biology and BioMed Central have announced there will be a cloud computing workshop at their conference "Beyond the Genome: The true gene count, human evolution and disease genomics" which takes place at Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA on 11-13 October 2010.

A discounted student registration rate is available for this event. Register now at http://www.beyondthegenome2010.com to ensure you don’t miss out.

The organizers of the ISMB 2010 party are looking for students to help them with the planning and running of the event.

In particular, they are looking for at least one additional DJ to do a 2 to 3 hour set, as well as for some Boston locals who would like to get involved in the organization of the event.

Please get in touch with Sean O'Donoghue if you are interested (sean.odonoghue@embl.de).

Please note that this is not a Student Council event and that we cannot answer any questions about this.

Today's issue of PLos Computational Biology features a "Ten Simple Rules" editorial about the organization of virtual conferences in developing nations. The editorial was written by leaders of African Regional Student Groups and organizers of the First African Virtual Bioinformatics Conference 2009 (AFBIX09).

Saras Saraswathi is a PhD student in the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology program at Iowa State University in the United States. She is a long time Student Council member and has been contributing to many of our activities over the years, in particular the Regional Student Group initiative.

Saras has recently started a blog on Nature Network, where she is writing about bioinformatics and her experience of being part of the ISCB Student Council community. Check it out!