2nd International Workshop on Biological Data Management (BIDM’04)
(In conjunction with DEXA 2004, Zaragoza, Spain)

Technological advances in high-throughput techniques and efficient data gathering methods coupled with a world wide effort in computational biology have resulted in a vast amount of life science data often available in distributed and heterogeneous repositories. These repositories contain interesting information such as sequence and structure data, annotations for biological data, results of complex and expensive computations, bio-medical publications, and so on. Newer and more sophisticated computational techniques to analyze such data are also being developed and made available for public use at a rapid pace. Nonetheless, the multiplicity in the objectives, methods, representation, and platforms of these data sources and analysis tools have created an urgent and immediate need for research in resource integration and platform independent processing of investigative queries involving heterogeneous data sources and analysis tools. It is now universally recognized that a database approach to analysis and management of biological data offers a convenient, high level, and efficient alternative to high volume biological data processing and management. Advances in database integration, query processing, web technology, work flow systems, and object-orientation can be leveraged to develop novel high-performance data management systems for biological applications.

Following the success of the 1st International Workshop on Biological Data Management last year, we are pleased to invite original contributions in biological data management and analysis for the 2nd International Workshop on Biological Data Management to be held in Zaragoza, Spain. This year we encourage submission of papers in broad areas of biological data management, novel algorithms and analysis tools for life sciences data, and integration of biological resources. We particularly encourage submission of papers addressing the issue of processing queries and transactions in disparate heterogeneous biological resources in a database environment (i.e., integration of analysis tools with data management systems).

In keeping with our mission,  BIDM 2004 is intended to bring together researchers in biological data management, algorithms and tools development and provide a common forum for exchange of ideas and discussion. We solicit papers with important new insights and experiences on managing biological data, and integrating analysis tools and algorithms with database query processing techniques. Topics of interest lie at the intersection of data management and general bioinformatics research. Following is a nonexclusive list of topics of interest for this year.

• Database integration and interoperability

• Warehousing biological data  

• Change management

• Biological data cleaning

•  Information Modeling, metadata and data sharing

•  Multidatabase indexing and multidatabase queries 

• Genomic algebra and query languages 

• Biological query processing and optimization

•  Data semantic and control

•  Ontology design

•  Biological Workflows

•  Knowledge discovery and data mining

•  Algorithms for large scale and distributed biological databases

•  Protein structure prediction

•  Modeling and Analysis of Biochemical Pathways

•  Recognition of Genes and Regulatory Elements

• Molecular Sequence analysis

•  Genome comparative analysis  

• Lab Information Management System (LIMS)

• Microarray data management and analysis

• Management of proteomic experimental data

• Management of Bio images

• XML and biological data management

• Biologist-friendly user interface design

Extended versions of selected accepted papers will be considered for publication in a special issue of an international journal (Selected papers for BIDM 2003 were published in Data and Knowledge Engineering (DKE), Elsevier Science).