IPB Organized First International Symposium on Bioinformatics, Chemometrics, and Metabolomics
Tropical Biopharmaca Research Center (Trop BRC) of Lembaga Penelitian dan Pengabdian kepada Masyarakat Institut Pertanian Bogor (LPPM Institute of Research and Community Empowerment of Bogor Agricultural University) organized the 2016 International Symposium on Bioinformatics, Chemometrics, and Metabolomics (ISBCM) at IPB International Convention Center (IICC), Bogor, on Tuesday, 18 October 2016. This international workshop was established as recommended by Metabolomics Research Cluster of the Directorate for Research and Innovation and the Working Group on Bioinformatics of Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of IPB (MIPA IPB). The 2016 was the first for its kind on specific symposium to be organized in Indonesia and selected three topics were as follows: agriculture, food and health services.
Rector of IPB, Prof. Dr. Herry Suhardiyanto, MSc., stated that bioinformatics, chemometrics, and metabolomics are multidisciplinary study program that continues to grow and has become the new trend in the last decade. "The symposium is an important part for the development of those three disciplines mentioned above, where researchers from within and outside Indonesia meet and discuss problems on agriculture, food and health services utilizing approaches of those three disciplines," he said.
He added that IPB had a great chance to become the locomotive of the development of bioinformatics, chemometricks, and metabolomics research in Indonesia. Especially those three areas are implicitly stated in the vision of IPB. Since its conception IPB has been active in developing science and technology in agriculture, marine and tropical biosciences for strengthening the national dignity of Indonesia. In its last Renstra, it was stated that IPB is a leading research-based university, therefore such international workshop was the important moment IPB to achieve its visions.
Dr. Mohamad Rafi as one of the researchers of Trop BRC LPPM, who is also Chairman of the Organizing Committee of 2016 ISBCM stated that objectives of the symposium were to introduce scientific works of bioinformatics, chemometricks, and metabolomics to Indonesia, as those three disciplines have been growing rapidly outside Indonesia. Finally, the international workshop is expected to be the forum for networking on research and cooperation of bioinformatics, chemometricks, and metabolomics scientists both inside and outside Indonesia.
"One of the MoU on herbal had been signed were between Trop BRC IPB with Poli Traditional Medicine of Indonesia (OTI) of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Airlangga, Surabaya. In this MoU it was stated that PSBT IPB will produce herbal remedies and they will be sent to OTI for clinics tests," said Lecturer Department of Chemistry at the IPB.
Three keynote speakers from Australia, Malaysia, and Singapore were invited to resent his presentation on this symposium. Those three speakers were Dr. Beben Bunyamin from the University of Queensland, Australia, who talked on Current Progress in Human Genomics of Complex Traits and Diseases; Prof. Dr. Zaki Mohd Salleh of Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia, who talked on the Human Genome Project in Malaysia: What's Next; and Dr. Sanjay Swarup of the National University of Singapore, Singapore, who talked on Understanding and Applications of Metabolomics in Environment and Agriculture.
The special scientific meeting was attended by around 100 participants consisted of researchers, government representatives, and businessmen. There were several sessions in progress, namely the panel discussion on the 3 keynote speakers and 6 invited speakers, oral presentations of 31 speakers and 38 poster exhibition. Report of this 2016 International Symposium will be published as a special issue of the international journal or proceedings and will be indexed by Scopus. In addition, on the different dates and days, another Application Workshop on Chemometricks for Quality Control of Medicinal Herbs as the continuation of the ISBCM 2016 will also be organized. (Wied)
