The First International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology

The First International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB-93), held 6-9 July 1993 at the Lister Hill Center of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), attracted over 200 computer scientists and biologists from 13 countries. As organizers of the conference, we saw it as the culmination of a series of successful meetings and colloquia, including workshops by the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, that, taken as a whole, indicate that molecular biology is one of the most rapidly growing application areas of AI and warrants a dedicated conference. AAAI was a cosponsor of the meeting and published the proceedings (AAAI Press, Menlo Park CA, ISBN 0-929280-47-4, $45). Extensive additional support in the form of grants was provided by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), primarily through NLM but also through the Division of Computer Research and Technology, and by the Department of Energy Office of Health and Environmental Research (which, like NIH, is heavily involved in the Human Genome Project). Further support was provided by the Biomatrix Society, a group that has a predilection for AI approaches to biological data.