February 2021
OLISSIPO Kick-off Meeting
9th February 2021
The Kick-Off Meeting of OLISSIPO project was held online with 26 participants including PIs and staff administrative from the consortium and officers from European Commission. During the KoM the first year’s activities were defined and mitigation measures to be taken due to the COVID-19 pandemic outlined.
JUNE 2021
OLISSIPO Week
14th-16th June 2021
The OLISSIPO Week had 27 speakers and more than 30 participants. It took place on a virtual mode and its main aim was to facilitate the interaction among members of the four partner institutions, to create synergies and accelerate project activities.
Thank you all for your participation!
November 2021
First seminar of The Small non-coding RNA Bioinformatics Club
8th November 2021
“A functional definition of “microRNA targets” – Prof. Hervé Seitz
– With the organization of one of the OLISSIPO PIs, Prof. Marie-France Sagot –
Outreach: Semana da Ciência & Tecnologia 2021 (INESC-ID)
25-26th November 2021
January 2022
First Annual Meeting
13th January 2022
After one year of the OLISSIPO kick-off, we held the first annual meeting. A very efficient and successful session to reflect on 2021, discuss relevant topics and plan new events and activities for 2022.
Second seminar of The Small non coding RNA Bioinformatics Club
10th January 2022
“Enhancer RNAs in cancer” – Prof. Han Liang
– With the organization of one of the OLISSIPO PIs, Prof. Marie-France Sagot –
March 2022
Third seminar of The Small non coding RNA Bioinformatics Club
21st March 2022
“Single Cell microRNA sequencing: Protocol Comparison, Automation and Application to Clinical Samples” – Prof. Stefan Kirsch
– With the organization of one of the OLISSIPO PIs, Prof. Marie-France Sagot –
Staff Exchange (Lisbon-Lyon)
17th-24th March 2022
During one week, three Early Stage Researchers (ESRs), the coordinator and the project manager joint the Inria team in Lyon (14 members, 7 ESRs).
Teams had the opportunity to work together, present their projects, share knowledge and discuss new ideas!
April 2022
Staff Exchange (Heidelberg-Lisbon)
4th-7 April 2022
The INESC-ID OLISSIPO team (19 members, including 8 ESRs) received some of the members of the EMBL team (7 members, 5 ESRs) for a lively Staff Exchange.
Staff Exchange (Basel-Lisbon)
26th-29th April 2022
INESC-ID (20 members, including 8 ESRs) received some of the members of the ETH Zürich team (7 members, 6 ESRs).
April-May 2022
Staff Exchange (Lyon-Lisbon)
25th April – 10th May 2022
Marie-France Sagot and an invited researcher, Ariel Silber, visited INESC-ID from April 25 – May 10, 2022. They interacted with 8 members of the INESC-ID team, including 3 ESRs.
May 2022
Across three days, 11-13 May, INESC-ID was present at SciComPT 2022, the Portuguese science communication congress, held this year in São Miguel island, in the Azores.
Supported by OLISSIPO, Pedro Ferreira, INESC-ID’s Communications and Outreach Coordinator, gave a short talk on some of the public engagement with technology ideas being brewed at INESC-ID, including — and not limited to — artificial intelligence, machine learning and computational biology, highlighting the dynamic nature of technological development as it responds to societal needs.
May-June 2022
Staff Exchange (Lisbon-Basel)
31th May – 3rd June 2022.
INESC-ID team (8 members, including 5 ESRs) visited ETH Zürich (17 members, 10 ESRs).
July 2022
OLISSIPO Retreat (Lyon/Heidelberg/Basel-Lisbon)
14th-15th July 2022
This two-day event in Lisbon (Olissippo Oriente Hotel) brought together, for the first time, Early Stage Researchers, Postdocs and PIs from the three partners of the OLISSIPO Consortium. It was an excellent opportunity to debate the importance of Computational Biology with Prof. Niko Beerenwinkel, Dr Simão Soares and Doctor Luís Costa, discuss ongoing and future collaborations, and have plenty of networking opportunities. There was also time for workshops on career development and science communication and outreach.
More info here.
Outreach: Summer in ULisboa
11th-15th July 2022
During one week, OLISSIPO team received two hundred high school students at INESC-ID for the “Digital Biology” program in the context of “Summer in ULisboa”. It was 10 sessions during 5 days with lots of fun and discussion on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics and all possible careers between computation and biology.
More details here.
October 2022
Outreach: OLISSIPO at FICA Festival
12th-13th October 2022
The OLISSIPO team (the ESR José Basílio, the OLISSIPO project manager Sara Tanqueiro and the INESC-ID Pedro Ferreira) was present at the FICA Festival in Porto Salvo to receive more than 100 students from basic schools to hear talking about Computational Biology and participate in a hands-on session to build their own paper model of a DNA double helix.
October 2022
Staff Exchange (Lisbon-Heidelberg)
21th-25th November 2022
INESC-ID team (7 members, including 5 ESRs) visited EMBL (17 members, 8 ESRs). Despite scientific presentations and discussions, INESC-ID staff participated in several training actions (Ethics and research integrity; Equality, Diversity and Inclusion; Make decisions and solve problems creatively; Annual performance review and feedback and Email management).
April 2023
League of Portuguese Bioinformatics
OLISSIPO supported this national competition in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. Its main aim was to facilitate the contact and integration of the national community working in the area and possible collaborations within it. Prof. Susana Vinga was part of the Scientific Committee.
May 2023
PIs discussed several topics and the ideas were presented to Prof. Rogério Martins from “Isto é Matemática“, a TV show. The episode entitled “Mathematics and the future of Medicine” explains concepts of principal components analysis, high-dimensional data and dimensionality reduction, showing its direct implications in our daily lives.
July 2023
24th anniversary of Pavilhão do Conhecimento
25th July 2023
The OLISSIPO project and INESC-ID were present at the 24th anniversary of Pavilhão do Conhecimento, one of Portugal’s most well-known science museums. Dr Pedro Ferreira, the INESC-ID Communication Officer, the ESRs Ana Rita Baião, João Tiago Aparicio and the PI Rui Henriques engaged more than 200 kids and their families in an Outreach activity dedicated to Computational Biology!
September 2023
22nd EPIA Conference in Artificial Intelligence
5th-8th September 2023
Our ESR Ana Rita Baião presented her work on “Evaluating the causal role of environmental data in shellfish biotoxin contamination on the Portuguese coast” at the 22nd EPIA Conference in Artificial Intelligence, held in Faial, Azores. This work was supervised by Prof. Susana Vinga and Marta Belchior Lopes. It was an excellent opportunity for Rita to discuss some ideas with experts in the field of AI. Congratulations Rita!
October 2023
Staff Exchange (Lisbon-Heidelberg) | OLISSIPO Annual Meeting
16th-18th October, 2023
Our team landed in Heidelberg last October 15 ready for the OLISSIPO Annual Meeting, held at EMBL.
On the first two days of our visit to EMBL, we had the chance to participate in the {Un-}Conference: AI Methods for Health, Life, and Natural Science hosted by AI Health Innovation Cluster and ELLIS – European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (Heidelberg Unit). Dr Emanuel Goncalves and the ESR Cláudia Constantino shared their work with lightning talks.
Prof. Jens Stoye and Prof. Dan Gusfield from the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) joined the OLISSIPO team in Heidelberg for the Annual Meeting with the Scientific Board (Prof. Jonas Almeida joined via ZOOM). The team focused on overviewing the activities developed within the project and the next steps for the future.
In parallel, students continued free discussions on-site to find synergies and possible collaborations.
Taking advantage of the presence of SAB members in EMBL, on October 18, INESC-ID ESRs presented their work to receive feedback and discuss science and exchanged knowledge.
We also had the opportunity to hear from Prof. Dan Gusfield an amazing talk focusing more on the past of Bioinformatics, Computational Biology and Genomics. This lecture was opened to EMBL and hosted by Dr Wolfgang Huber.
October 2023
Modern Statistics for Biology Training School 2023
Prof. Susana Vinga presented some results of project OLISSIPO Fostering Computational Biology Research and her research at INESC-ID in the fantastic Modern Statistics for Biology Training School 2023 organised at the University of Tirana, Albania. Thanks a lot for the invitation, and looking forward to more events! They explored the main statistical and machine learning methods and their practical applications in the fields of biology and health.
November 2023
Morphos Meeting
The OLISSIPO project was invited to participate in the Morphos Meeting at Instituto Superior Técnico to share our experience with our Twinning project. The group of Hugo Morais is part of a consortium including INESC-ID and IST, University of French Guiana and CIEMAT in Spain, which submitted a proposal to win a Twinning in the Horizon Europa.
Machine Learning in Biomedicine and Biotechnology Webinar
Prof. Susana Vinga had the privilege of participating in a webinar organized by IEEE Portugal. The event, part of a series of webinars, was dedicated to “Machine Learning in Biomedicine and Biotechnology”, delving into the complex landscape of technological challenges, biases, and ethical considerations in the application of Artificial Intelligence to healthcare.
June 2024
IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging
The INESC-ID Early-Stage Researcher Cláudia Constantino had the opportunity to present her work at IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging in Athens, Greece!
This work has been developed together with the Nuclear Medicine-Radiopharmacology team and Hematology Department at Champalimaud Foundation and reflects a robust deep learning segmentation model of lymphoma lesions in FDG PET/CT images.
Final OLISSIPO Meeting
The OLISSIPO project is coming to an end!
This week all members were together in Basel at ETH for the final meeting of this amazing project.
During two days, Early-Stage Researchers (ESRs) had the opportunity to present the main results of the work they have been developing in the last few years, and share thoughts and new ideas for future collaboration.
As usual in our annual meetings, Scientific Advisory Board members also gave two lectures:
– “A new parameter-free framework for sequence comparison” by Prof. Pavel A. Pevzner;
– “Uncovering how mRNA transcription and degradation shape embryonic development” by Prof. Magnus Rattray.
That’s a wrap of these three years and a half of ESR training, knowledge exchanging, sharing and collaborating.
Thanks to all the hundreds of students, researchers and research administrators who have crossed our path 💻🧬
