2nd European Bioimage Analysis Symposium Report
Webiste
Institut Curie, Paris, January 5-6 2015
The second EUBIAS taggathon and showcase were both co-organized by FBI and were planned on separate dates , to allow the organization of EUBIAS showcase as a joint event to QBI in Institut Pasteur: about 50 attendees participated to both meetings. Since EUBIAS showcase is planned for communication between developers and analysts and QBI is for discussion among developers, co-organization seems to have facilitated more attendance in both meetings.
European Bioimage Analysis Symposium aims at increasing the accessibility of image analysis tools to biologists and also to facilitate feedbacks from biologists to software developers. Moreover, EUBIAS is the meeting organized by bioimage analysts to discuss about their roles in biology. The first EUBIAS was held in Barcelona in 2013. Efforts have been pursued for creating a community of image analyst, to bridge new algorithms, new microscopy methods and the users, and the same spirit continued to the 2nd EUBIAS held in Institut Curie, Paris in Dec. 2014 and Jan 2015 for Taggathon and showcase meeting.
The second EuBIAS showcase meeting gathered around 120 scientists from all over the world, 40 % from France, and around 50% working in microscopy facilities. During this 2 days meeting, 35 state-of-art quality talks including 3 keynote lectures were given on topics ranging from general purpose open image analysis software to more focused application packages for analyzing cells and particle. Two panel discussions were animated, with highly interactive exchange of opinions and views in lively atmosphere: one was on the open source licensing ecosystem and the coexistence between free and commercial software; the second one around the definition of the Bioimage Analysts community, its relationship and positioning with both life scientists and developpers. In addition as a new approach, the previous poster session was replaced by two ‘meet the developers’ sessions. Interactive live demos at individual presentation slots ignited fruitful and direct exchange of comments among participants and speakers and added further excitements to the meeting. The strong involvement of commercial companies in this event should also be noted here.
In a nutshell, the event was extremely successful in increasing the flow of information within the image analysis community. Many participants discovered themselves as being bioimage analyst and commented that “This is the meeting I was looking for”. The next EUBIAS is already planned for 2016, several locations are conceivable.
Directions
caroline.thiriet • January 16, 2015