History of MLSB

Inspired by the workshop on Probabilistic Modeling and Machine Learning in Structural and Systems Biology organized in Helsinki, Finland in 2006, the first MLSB workshop (backup site) was organized in Evry, France in September 2007. Following its success, the second MLSB workshop (backup site) was organized in Brussels, Belgium in September 2008; the third MLSB workshop (backup site) was organized in Ljubljana, Slovenia in September 2009; the fourth MLSB workshop (backup site) was organized in Edinburgh, Scotland in September 2010; the fifth MLSB workshop (backup site) was organized in Vienna, Austria in July 2011; and the sixth MLSB workshop was organized in Basel, Switzerland in September 2012. The seventh MLSB was organized in Berlin, Germany in July 2013.

The workshops were attended by about 80 researchers (each) interested in applying machine learning to systems biology, who gathered and exchanged experiences and research ideas in a very fruitful two-day single session event. The scientific program was based on invited talks given by internationally renowned speakers, oral presentations of peer-reviewed original works, as well as poster sessions. Revised versions of (selected) papers were published in BMC Proceedings and JMLR Workshop and Conference proceedings.

The unanimous opinion of the attendees and organizers was that MLSB should become a recurrent annual event, keeping the same single session format. It should also alternate between co-location with Machine Learning and Systems Biology events. Since MLSB08 and MLSB09 were co-located with ECML/PKDD Conference, MLSB10 was co-located with ICSB, MLSB11 was co-located with ISMB/ECCB 2011. MLSB12 was co-located with ECCB 2012 in Basel, and MSLB13 was organized as a Special Interest Group at ECCB/ISMB 2013 in Berlin.

MLSB07, MLSB09 and MLSB10 were PASCAL2 core events and the lectures were recorded and made available at VideoLectures.net.