Workshop Organizer:

Organizer:

University of Surrey (UK)

Chair:

Dr. Roman Bauer

Senior Lecturer in University of Surrey

Personal Bio

Dr Roman Bauer is a Senior Lecturer (AssociateProfessor) at the Nature Inspired Computing and Engineering research group, in the Computer Science Research Centre at the University of Surrey (UK). He received his Bachelor's and Master's Degree in Computational Science and Engineering from ETH Zuerich, Switzerland. Afterwards, he did his doctoral studies at the Institute for Neuroinformatics (ETH Zürich/Uni Zürich) on simulations of brain development. He then joined Newcastle University (UK) in 2013 as a postdoc and afterwards led his own lab funded by two fellowships (MRC Skills Development Fellowship and EPSRC UKRI Innovation Fellowship). In 2020 he became a Lecturer and in 2023 a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Computer Science, University of Surrey, where he since then leads the interdisciplinary COMBYNE research lab (www.combynelab.com).

Dr Bauer's research focuses on the computational modelling and analysis of biological dynamics, in particular those of the brain. Core components of his interests are neurodevelopment and neurodegeneration. His highly interdisciplinary research involves modern computing approaches, biological expertise, innovative machine learning methods and IT- related collaboration. Dr Bauer is co-founder and spokesperson of the international BioDynaMo collaboration, which has created the open-source and high-performance agent-based modelling software BioDynaMo (www.biodynamo.org).

Call for Papers:

Topics:

The scope of this research topic includes any computational, biomedical engineering and/or bioinformatics methods that are applied to biomedical problems. Such problems should ideally focus on the biophysical and/or genetic processes that are relevant to a given biomedical topic, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, neurodevelopmental conditions, or neurodegenerative disorders. The application can be with regards to fundamental science, to better understand the underlying disease factors, or for computational diagnosis as well as treatment optimisation. Specific themes to be addressed include:

Computational Biomedicine

AI for Medicine

Computational Neurology

Computational Science

Agent-based Modeling

Background:

With the vast improvements in computational resources, both from a hardware as well as software perspective, it has become possible to advance and accelerate biomedical research. Indeed, computational techniques have become a fundamental pillar of research, rendering the scientific method more efficient and facilitating collaboration across disciplines. In particular, experimental and medical/clinical researchers can effectively work with computational experts since computational models have increasingly gained in detail, accuracy and realism. Along those lines, biological systems such as the brain, skin or bacterial biofilms can be captured based on experimental data from different spatial and temporal scales. Moreover, state-of-the-art AI and bioinformatics models can be employed using large-scale data-sets, which is further facilitated by the increasing availability of public databases and practicality for collaboration across labs.

This workshop will allow researchers who work in computationally-assisted biomedical research to present their work, exchange ideas and ideally foster further collaboration.

Goal/Rationale:

The goal of this research topic is to present, discuss and exchange ideas on bioinformatics and computational approaches for scientific challenges in biology and medicine, that go beyond classification and/or regression performance. Given the crucial point of explainability and interpretability in biomedical modeling, we would like to study approaches that address current flaws in black-box AI techniques. We would like to achieve a general meeting where an open discussion of current challenges in AI for biomedicine, and existing gaps is encouraged.

A focus of the meeting will be on the presentation of well-established but also novel, innovative approaches forexplainable model generation, comparison and testing. Ideally, these should facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration. Ultimately, we would like to see this meeting as a stepping stone for wider, international biomedical collaboration and grant proposals.

Submission:

Prospective authors are kindly invited to submit full papers that include title, abstract, introduction, tables, figures, conclusion and references. It is unnecessary to submit an abstract in advance. Please submit your papers in English.

Each paper should be no less than 4 pages. One regular registration can cover a paper of 6 pages, and additional pages will be charged. Please format your paper well according to the conference template before submission. Paper Template Download

Please prepare your paper in both .doc/.docx and .pdf format and submit your full paper by email with both formats attached directly to ws_guildford@icmmgh.org

Important Dates:

Process	Date & Time
Paper Submission	February 14, 2025
Review Process	2 weeks
Revise & Acceptance	2 weeks
Registration & Payment	2 weeks

Fees (VAT Included)	Amount
Registration and Publishing Fee (6 pages included)	$450
Additional Page (per extra page)	$40

Publication:

Workshop Proceedings

Accepted papers will be published in Theoretical and Natural Science (TNS) (Print ISSN 2753-8818), and will be submitted to Conference Proceedings Citation Index (CPCI), Crossref, CNKI, Portico, Engineering Village (Inspec), Google Scholar, and other databases for indexing. The situation may be affected by factors among databases like processing time, workflow, policy, etc.

Title: Theoretical and Natural Science (TNS)
Press: EWA Publishing, United Kingdom
ISSN: 2753-8818, 2753-8826 (electronic)

* The papers will be exported to production and publication on a regular basis. Early-registered papers are expected to be published online earlier.

Highlights:

On February 21st 2025 the workshop "Computational modelling and simulation in biology and medicine" was held in Guildford at the University of Surrey (UK). The workshop was hosted by the COMBYNE lab (www.combynelab.com) and held as a hybrid meeting, to facilitate involvement of participants from many different countries and institutions. This international workshop comprised a selection of presentations and interactive talks on Computational Biomedicine topics from leading academics, well-established domain experts and also PhD students who embark on a research career. Over 25 participants were present, mostly academics and PhD students from institutions such as the University of Surrey, King’s College London, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain), commercial entities and others. Members of the international BioDynaMo collaboration (www.biodynamo.org) also contributed to the workshop.

The workshop started off with an introductory talk on research on simulations of neurodevelopmental connectivity formation guided by retinal waves. Subsequent talks touched on many of the challenges and prospects of computational modelling in biomedicine. The audience actively engaged with the presenters and brought up important issues such as the challenges of reproducing multiple different experimental modalities from a single computational model, or practical questions with regards to brain-machine interfacing for neuromodulation. Example talks focussed on topics comprising various complex systems and their dynamics, such as for instance the growth of inter-areal connections of the human brain, biologically inspired code optimisation and predicting the impact of brain stimulation. More information on the workshop including a programme can be found here: https://www.combynelab.com/home/news/comosibime2025

Access to Workshop:ICMMGH 2025 Workshop -- Guildford - YouTube

Workshop Info:

Workshop Title:

Computational Modelling in Biology and Medicine

Date:

February 21st, 2025 (GMT)

Venue:

Surrey Space Centre, BA building, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7XH

How to Participate:

Poster

The workshop provides an opportunity for poster exhibition. Authors who are interested in presenting a poster, please submit your materials (prefer in .pdf) to ws_guildford@icmmgh.org before February 14th, 2025.

Detailed information on your presentation date and time will be confirmed closer to the workshop. If you have any questions about your presentation or the workshop, please email ws_guildford@icmmgh.org

Poster Presentation Guidelines

Poster presentations must be prepared using the template provided:
*Poster layout template for poster presentation (download)

*Poster layout background (download)
Posters should generally be in A1 size (width: 594mm x height: 841mm) and include the followings:

Title, author and co-author names, and the affiliation(s) information.

Body parts, including "Abstract", "Introduction", "Methods", "Results", "Discussion" and "Conclusions".
Presenters are suggested to set the font size properly and avoid placing anything at the margin part of the poster as it will be difficult to view.
Posters should be well illustrated. All the pictures used should be high quality and with high resolution.

(You can refer to the instructions for more detailed information. Additional presentation guidelines may be announced by workshop committees.)

Attend in person

If you want to attend the workshop on-site, please email ws_guildford@icmmgh.org. The workshop seats are limited. Both contributors and non-contributors who wish to participate in the workshop in person need to apply to the workshop organizers.

VISA:

Welcome to GOV.UK

In order to ensure the information is correct and up to date, there may be changes which we are not aware of. And different countries have different rules for the visa application. It is always a good idea to check the latest regulations in your country. This page just gives some general information of the visa application.

UK Visa Information

What you need to do

Check if what you plan to do in the UK is allowed as a Standard Visitor.
Check you meet the eligibility requirements.
Check if you need to apply for a visa to visit the UK.
Apply for a Standard Visitor visa online - if you need one.

Check you meet the eligibility requirements

You must have a passport or travel document to enter the UK. It should be valid for the whole of your stay.

You must be able to show that:

you'll leave the UK at the end of your visit
you're able to support yourself and your dependants during your trip (or have funding from someone else to support you)
you're able to pay for your return or onward journey (or have funding from someone else to pay for the journey)
you'll not live in the UK for extended periods through frequent or successive visits, or make the UK your main home

Check if you need a visa to visit the UK

Depending on your nationality, you'll either:

have to apply for a Standard Visitor visa before you travel to the UK
be able to visit the UK for up to 6 months without needing a visa

You can check if you need a visa before you apply.

If you do not need a visa, you must still meet the Standard Visitor eligibility requirements to visit the UK. You may be asked questions at the UK border about your eligibility and the activities you plan to do.

My scientific studies have afforded me great gratification; and I am convinced that it will not be long before the whole world acknowledges the results of my work.

- Gregor Mendel