From September 1 to 5, 2024, the COMBINE 2024 conference took place at the University of Stuttgart as a satellite event to the Virtual Human Physiology (VPH) conference. COMBINE is an international conference of the COMputational BIology NEtwork (COMBINE), held annually at different locations around the world. This year’s COMBINE was organized by Nicole Radde and Sebastian Höpfl in collaboration with the Stuttgart Cluster of Excellence SimTech.
The COMBINE consortium is an initiative focused on coordinating the development of community standards and formats for computer models in biology and medicine. The conference is open to scientists at all career stages interested in developing and using these standards. It provides a platform for exchange, discussion, and interactive learning.
We were pleased to welcome numerous international keynote speakers to the event, including:
- Irina Balaur, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
- Dirk Drasdo, INRIA, France
- Fabian Fröhlich, Francis Crick Institute, United Kingdom
- Marc-Thorsten Hütt, Constructor University Bremen, Germany
- Matthias König, Humboldt University Berlin, Germany
- Heinz Köppl, TU Darmstadt, Germany
- Göksel Misirli, Keele University, United Kingdom
- David Nickerson, Auckland Bioengineering Institute, New Zealand
- Jürgen Pleiss, University of Stuttgart, Germany
- Herbert Sauro, University of Washington, USA
- Lucian Smith, University of Washington, USA
- Benjamin Uekermann, University of Stuttgart, Germany
- Judith Wodke, University Medicine Greifswald, Germany
The conference was a resounding success, with around 65 participants engaging in lively discussions about standards for data and models, as well as the latest developments in data collection and model analysis. These discussions took place after presentations and during numerous breakout sessions.
During the dedicated SimTech session, we showcased exemplary work from our cluster, leading to in-depth discussions with participants about topics such as EnzymeML, the model coupling software preCICE, and reproducibility in stochastic models and statistical methods.
Overall, COMBINE 2024 was a highly successful event thanks to the support of the German Research Foundation (DFG) through its "International Scientific Events" funding line, as well as SimTech and the Stuttgart Research Center Systems Biology (SRCSB), whose contributions made this valuable exchange possible.