this proposal requests support for The Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing (PSB), specifically for PSB '03 -'07. This meeting is held annually in early January in the State of Hawaii. The exact dates and locations for PSB '03-'07 have not yet been determined. This meeting attracts scientists from all around the world whose interests lie at the interface between computer science and biology. Most areas of computational biology are covered, with an emphasis on molecular biology, bioinformatics, and genomics. This meeting was established to promote the field of computational biology by providing a forum for the presentation of cutting-edge research and the exchange of ideas. History of PSB: For more information, please visit www.hsb.stanford.edu. PSB arose from another meeting Biotechnology Computing, first held in 1993; thus the currently supported PSB 2002 will make the 10th anniversary of this conference. Attendance has grown from 103 at PSB-96, the first year with the PSB designation to 365 at PSB'01. Important Features: Many recognize PSB, RECOMB and ISMB as the three major recurring meetings in bioinformatics. Among these three, PSB has a unique grass-roots development mechanism. The Co-Organizers issue an open call for session proposals and then select from an increasingly competitive group of proposals. This approach allows PSB to spotlight emerging areas with organized coherent sessions as defined by the participants. The chairs of the selected session proposals are the lynchpins of PSB. They encourage submission of papers by colleagues, develop open calls for papers, oversee the reviews of the papers in their sessions, insure that the accepted papers arrive on time for publication prior to the meeting and organize their session and workshop at the meeting. Having the conference proceedings available at the meeting increases the depth of exchanges between participants. Indexing by Medline and electronic availability combine to enhance the value of these conference proceedings. The Hawaii location was chosen with deliberation for its outreach towards the Pacific Rim. This is important because of the exchange of bioinformatics in Japan and the emerging strengths around the Pacific Rim. Indeed the number of Pacific Rim participants grew from 17 at PSB'96 TO 57 AT psb'01. With the completion of so many genomes, including a rough draft of our own, PSB is more important than ever. Indeed, PSB was started in anticipation of this period of time.
