Promoting synergistic research and education in computational biology and drug design.

Supported by US National Science Foundation (NSF) and the International Society of Intelligent Biological Medicine (ISIBM), the IEEE 7th International Conference on Bioinformatics and Bioengineering at Harvard Medical School was designed dynamically in response to the cutting edge synergistic research and education. One of the key components of this academic event is the poster presentation focusing on specific topics to foster collaboration between the computational biology and drug design domains. The Harvard meeting attracted over five hundred scientists, researchers and medical doctors world-wide to present, discuss and exchange their research. The synergies between computational biology and drug design research had been well observed by participants. The poster sessions had been designed to be responsive to the need for synergistic inter/multidisciplinary research and education. A panel of judges was formed to decide the best posters. The papers in this special issue were selected for runners-up of the best poster award by a panel of judges. Authors were then invited to expand their posters into full research papers. Submitted papers were required to contain significant additional scientific detail and were rigorously reviewed by at least three external reviewers. Detailed information regarding the academic event can be found at the White Paper of the IEEE 7th International Conference on Bioinformatics and Bioengineering at Harvard Medical School at BMC Genomics http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/9/S2/I1.