BioSB 2025 – A colourful edition of the annual conference on Bioinformatics and System Biology

Health-RI, in its role as coordinator of TDCC-LSH,  supports BioSB with the organization of the annual BioSB conference. Each year one of the academic groups of the BioSB community volunteers to prepare the annual conference, and to chair the Conference Programme Committee.  This year's partners in the conference organization were Radboud umc, Radboud University and HAN University of Applied Sciences. Prof. dr. Peter-Bram ‘t Hoen (head of the bioinformatics group at Radboud umc) was chairperson of BioSB 2025. 

Inspiring meetings at a beautiful location

This years BioSB gathering  was organized at the beautiful 'Kasteel de Berckt' in Baarlo (NL). As every year, an interactive retreat was organized one day  prior to the conference (19 May)  for all BioSB PhD students studying at the Dutch universities. A Green IT workshop (in collaboration with 'the Green Labs', Princess Maxima Center) formed the scientific framework for this networking meeting. 

Also as usual, the annual meeting of the BioSB Faculty group took place May 19. In a well-attended, lively meeting, members of this group of leading scientists within the fields of BioSB in the Netherlands discussed the future of BioSB education and the role of industry within the community. There was also room for brief presentations of project proposals under the TDCC-LSH call 2025, in order to create community-wide support. 

The BioSB 2025 conference was held on May 20-21, 2025. We welcomed over 300 participants, coming from more than 35 national and international educational and research institutions and from partners in industry. The weather cooperated very well to make the theme of this BioSB edition stand out.  

Bringing color into Bioinformatics and Systems Biology 

After a sparkling, colourful opening by the collaborating Nijmegen partners with an AI-generated song (enthusiastically received by the participants), Peter-Bram 't Hoen opened the conference with an inspiring speech: he emphasized the openness and diversity of the BioSB community, with everyone adding their own colour to the broad spectrum. The chairman called for listening carefully to each other in order to learn from each other, and not to miss the voices of the young, less experienced scientists.  

During BioSB 2025 (view the full programme here) three renowned international speakers shared their scientific insights: 

• Prof. Dr. Emma Schymanski (University of Luxembourg) spoke about ‘Exposomics: where Systems Biology meets Chemistry’.
• Jan Korbel (European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Germany) shared his work on ‘Investigating Origins of de novo Chromosomal Aberration by systematically coupling Imaging and Genomics’
• James Briscoe (The Francis Crick Institute, UK) taught the attendees all about ‘The dynamics of Spinal Cord Development’. 

These invited scientists provided enthusiastically received, valuable lessons and animated discussions. 

Research Updates, Industry Collaboration, and Leadership Transition

Also receiving plenary attention was the TDCC-LSH session, coordinated by Celia van Gelder (Health-RI, Network Manager of the Thematic Digital Competence Center for Life Sciences & Health (TDCC-LSH)). This session provided an update on ongoing TDCC-LSH-funded projects, presented by the individual PI’s involved. The Young Investigator Award 2025 was awarded to Lieke Michielsen. She presented the computational work she did as PhD student ( TU-Delft en de Erasmus university) on brain cells. 

Next to the plenary sessions, 48 highly rated scientific presentations could be heard in 3 parallel lecture halls. Also these sessions, with themes like ‘Single-cell and Spatial Omics’, ‘Genomics’, ‘Constraint-based Modeling’, ’ELIXIR/Infrastructure’, ‘Multi-Omics’,  and ‘Machine Learning’ were greatly appreciated by the audience. 

Special attention was paid to the partnership with industry. One of the session, devoted to the theme “Industrial challenges waiting for academic solutions”, attracted great interest and provided interesting and animated discussions. There was also wide interest in the 'Meet your future employer' event, where young professionals oriented towards the job market were brought into contact with potential employers, both from industry and academia. 

The BioSB Community Board has bid farewell to its long-time chairman and driving force Prof. Dr. Jaap Heringa (VU, Amsterdam). Prof. Dr. Ilja Arts (Maastricht university) takes over the gavel. Fortunately, Jaap will continue to support the board for the time being as ELIXIR delegate. The community board has presented its new members (view the new board composition here). With the support of BioSB community manager Petra Aarnoutse (Health-RI, training project manager), the board is now well equipped to manage all portfolios effectively. 

Participating scientists were encouraged to present their (early) work in the form of posters. During several sessions there was a lot of interest and interaction around the more than 80 posters. Prizes were awarded by the poster jury led by Martijn Huijnen of Radboud umc, in addition to a public prize determined by online voting. The poster jury prize was won by Robert Koetsier (WUR) with 'Using cross-species coexpression to predict metabolic interactions in microbiomes',  and the audience prize was won by Ryan de Vries (TU/e) with 'Digital Twins for People with Diabetes using Real-World Data'. 

Looking back and moving forward

We look back with great satisfaction on a successful conference with enthusiastic participants that awarded the conference with an 8,3! (Average of 100 responses). At the same time, we are already looking forward to the next edition: BioSB 2026 is scheduled for May 12 and 13, 2026 (Again at ‘Kasteel de Berckt’  in Baarlo, NL). For this edition Maastricht University will be the organizing partner of the BioSB Conference.