Over the past two decades, biology has been transformed by high-throughput technologies that generate vast amounts of data. This revolution created demand for efficient algorithms, parallel computing infrastructures (GPUs, HPC, cloud platforms), and sophisticated software tools. Open-source software is integral to this landscape.

Bioinformatics bridges engineering, computer science, and biology. We define it broadly to encompass:

Genomics
Medical imaging (ie Radiology, digital Pathology)
AI-driven protein research
Medical informatics and med-tech
… Any field at the intersection of the Life Sciences and technology that has a FOSS angle

It focuses on sharing and collaboration in the life sciences, covering:

Best practices and emerging approaches
FOSS projects and tools
Workflow Management & HPC
Reproducibility and open science
Software Engineering and UX
AI & Machine Learning applications
Visualization and interactive tools

Call for presentations

Submission deadline: November 30, 2025

We invite proposals from developers, researchers, and any enthusiasts working with open source tools in the life sciences. Whether you’re from academia, industry, or the public sector, we want to hear about:

Technical presentations on FOSS bioinformatics tools and projects
Tutorials and demos of workflows, pipelines, infrastructure or software
Best practices in reproducibility, performance optimization, or collaboration
Experience reports from production systems or large-scale deployments
Technologies like ML/AI

We especially encourage submissions that:

Address practical challenges with real-world solutions
Cover the biological context driving computational choices
Showcase cross-disciplinary collaboration
Highlight lessons learned from FOSS development in life sciences

We have several talk Formats:

Standard talks: 20 minutes + 5 minutes Q&A
Short talks: 10 minutes + 5 minutes Q&A
Lightning talks: 5 minutes “Your project in 1 slide” (perfect for introducing new tools, seeking collaborators, or sparking discussions which can be continued in the hallway)

Note: All talks will be live-streamed and recorded (audio+video). By submitting, you agree to being recorded and that your content will be published under a Creative Commons (CC-BY) license.
How to submit a talk

Go to FOSDEM pretalx website.
Indicate the duration in the title (20min, 10min or 5 min)
Select ‘Bioinformatics and Computational Biology’ from the ‘Track’ field.

Note: Organizers may request shorter talk formats if we receive more submissions than we can accommodate.

If you cannot use Pretalx for any reason, contact us via the mailing list (https://framagroupes.org/sympa/info/bioinfo-fosdem) or in our Matrix space.
Join our community

Matrix room: https://matrix.to/#/#fosdem-bioinfo:matrix.org
Mailing list: https://framagroupes.org/sympa/info/bioinfo-fosdem

We look forward to your submissions and to seeing you at FOSDEM 2026!

The Bioinformatics & Computational Biology Devroom Team

Alexis Praga - Medical Doctor, Ph.D in HPC
Freek van Hemert - Next-Generation Sequencing & Data Infrastructure
Jim Procter - Computational Scientist, FOSS Community
Elena Grassi - Computational Biologist, Bioconductor/Bioconda contributor
Alessandi Pilotti - Open Source Cloud Computing and Bioinformatics