EMBARGOED TILL 30 July 2002

Joint Press Release
Media contacts:
S* Alliance. Anthony Weiss, aweiss@usyd.edu.au
APBioNet. S Subbiah, sec@apbionet.org

TWO LEADING INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS S* ALLIANCE AND APBIONET TO ADVANCE BIOINFORMATICS EDUCATION IN THE ASIA PACIFIC REGION

Sydney and Palo Alto, 30 July 2002.
The S* Life Sciences Informatics Alliance and the Asia Pacific Bioinformatics Network (APBioNet) signed a Memorandum of Understanding to promote bioinformatics education in the Asia Pacific region.

Since early 2001, the S* Alliance has been nurturing bioinformatics education through its online course modules - featuring top names such as Russ Altman, Doug Brutlag and Michael Levitt, in bioinformatics lecture videos, interactive chatrooms and online quizzes. "Over 200 students have signed up and graduated from the course with certificates of participation. Demand has outstripped supply particularly from Asian countries," said S* Chairman, Tony Weiss from University of Sydney, a member of the S* Alliance.

Earlier this year, the APBioNet, the oldest and largest Asia Pacific bioinformatics organisation, endorsed a five-point resolution achieved at the North-South Networking Symposium held at the International Conference on Bioinformatics InCOB 2002, Bangkok, Thailand. "This included a resolution to improve bioinformatics education and awareness in the Asia Pacific region," noted the APBioNet Vice President Shoba Ranganathan, from the National University of Singapore, another S* founding member, who is coincidentially the current Secretary of the S* Alliance. "Consequently this agreement to work together followed naturally through a convergence of interest." she added.

In this accord, APBioNet will be expanding the coverage of S* Alliance online lectures in three ways, by extending the number of mirror sites of the streaming video lectures, by promoting the translation into local languages, and by increasing the number of mirror sites in the AP region. The S* course is global, but the Internet bandwidth going into some places is absolutely appalling," states Win Hide of the South African National Bioinformatics Institute. "In Africa, we had to resort to pressing CD-ROMs. So an extensive network of local mirror sites would certainly help."

APBioNet also intends to add course content for the S* Alliance contributed lectures, as well as to seek out bioinformatics luminaries in the Asian region to participate in the S* Alliance's Luminaries Lecture series. "In Europe, we have already started to look for key European luminaries in Bioinformatics to give lectures," said Jan-Olov Höög of the Karolinska Institutet. "Our contacts in Asia are limited and APBioNet's assistance would be of tremendous assistance to us in building a truly global resource," said Siv Andersson of Uppsala University, another Swedish founding member of S* Alliance.

In view of the current global shortage of bioinformaticians as educational institutions and industries alike are pushed for bioinformatics talent, the S* Alliance has already made a start with collecting CVs of its top participants, many of whom are keen to be placed in positions of employment or graduate studies. "We have a bunch of outstanding participants, and we keep getting requests to fill job vacancies," said Phyllis Gardner of Stanford University, one of the originators of the S* Alliance. "Working with APBioNet will find new ways of facilitating this matchmaking process."

"S* Alliance participants from the region are expected to benefit from this, and APBioNet institutional members who are keen to hire bioinformaticians worldwide, will no doubt find this connection with S* participants beneficial." said S Subbiah, President of APBioNet and S* co-founder and course lecturer.

Details of the Action Plan for both organisations is listed in http://www.apbionet.org/agreement/

Media Contacts:
S* Alliance Chairman
Dr Tony Weiss, University of Sydney
Email: a.weiss@biotech.usyd.edu.au

APBioNet Chairman
Dr S Subbiah, University of Stanford
Tel: +65-9664-0347
Email: sec@apbionet.org

About S* Life Sciences Informatics Alliance
S-Star.org is an alliance among six different universities, spanning five continents including Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, National University of Singapore, Stanford University, USA, University of Sydney, Australia, University of Uppsala, Sweden, and University of the Western Cape, South Africa. The S-Star group of teaching institutions have formed a global alliance to provide a global, unified bioinformatics learning environment (GLOBULE) made up of modular courses in the disciplines of genomics, bioinformatics, and medical informatics The mission is to provide anyone with an introductory course in bioinformatics. This collection of S-star bioinformatics lectures will be available to students anywhere through the internet , regardless of whether the classes are attended by individuals or in groups. For more information see http://www.s-star.org/ or see Nature 411:513 (31 May 2001) Nurturing Bioinformatics Online.

About APBioNet
The Asia Pacific Bioinformatics Network (APBioNet) is a non-profit, non-governmental, international organization founded in 1998. It focuses on the promotion of bioinformatics in the Asia Pacific Region. Since 1998, its mission has been to pioneer the growth and development of bioinformatics awareness, training, education, infrastructure, resources and research amongst member countries and economies. Its work includes the technical coordination, liaison and/or affiliation with other international bodies such as the EMBnet and ISCB. APBioNet has more than 20 organizational and 400 individual members from over 12 countries in the Asia Pacific region. It is spearheading a number of key bioinformatics initiatives in the region in collaboration with international organizations such as APAN, APEC, S* Alliance and A-IMBN and with industry partners. More about APBioNet can be found at: http://www.apbionet.org/.

First Created: 23 Jul 2002 - ttw