iEvoBio, the conference on Informatics for Phylogenetics, Evolution, and Biodiversity, is a recently founded satellite conference held in conjunction with the Evolution meetings. iEvoBio aims to be a forum bringing together biologists working in evolution, systematics, and biodiversity, with software developers, and mathematicians, both to catalyse the development of new tools, and to increase awareness of the possibilities offered by existing technologies (ranging from mega- scale data analysis to rich visualization). The inaugural meeting was held in 2010 (see http://ievobio.org/2010) and received wide acclaim; the second one, held in 2011 (see http://ievobio.org/2011), was similarly successful and productive. The conference is poised to establish itself as a self-sustaining annual event and a must-attend for researchers, developers, and users of informatics resources in our fields.

For the 2012 iEvoBio conference, to be held in junction with the 2012 Evolution Meetings in Ottawa, Canada, we are seeking new members to join us on the organizing committee. Aside from being enthusiastic about the conference itself, we are particularly interested in people with research pursuits that involve integrative, interdisciplinary, and synthetic questions, and a commitment to promoting the reuse of data, information, and software.

Serving on the iEvoBio organizing committee entails attending weekly conference calls, and sharing responsibility for making the conference happen at all stages, including crafting communications such as calls for abstracts, managing content contributions from participants, and budgeting.

The iEvoBio organizing committee shapes and manages the entire event, from start to finish. As such, participating in the committee provides ample opportunities for people with ideas, wild or not, to conceive innovative program elements towards iEvoBio’s social objectives of fostering participation, interaction, and collaboration, and to make those happen. The committee has been marked by an open- minded, highly constructive, but also deeply professional climate. Serving on the committee is actual work, but also provides a unique opportunity to collaborate with like-minded people who one may not otherwise get to work with, on a product for the benefit of our community and the advancement of our science.

To apply, fill out a short online application form at http://bit.ly/okxqS1 by October 15th, 2011. We expect the organizing committee to have at least 6-7 members, and thus currently at least 4-5 seats are available to be filled through this call. This call is open to people at all professional “grades” and our hope is that at least one, and hopefully more, seats will be filled with graduate or postdoctoral students. We (see the undersigned below) will sort through the applications and reach a decision within one week after close of applications. If you have any questions about the conference or the committee, we encourage you to resolve these before applying by contacting us (see email addresses below).

Please feel free to re-send, tweet (http://bit.ly/qyYT0s), or share this message as needed. Thanks!

On behalf of the future 2012 iEvoBio Organizing Committee, Rob Guralnick (robert.guralnick@colorado.edu), University of Colorado at Boulder Hilmar Lapp (hlapp@nescent.org), National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent)