The in silico concept refers to computer simulations that model natural or laboratory processes and that are used for investigating any natural science. This expression is used in line with the terms in vivo and in vitro that define experiments performed on living organisms or outside them, respectively. The expression in silico arises from the material from which all the computer components are made: silicon.

The in silico strategies are gaining weight in research because of their extreme speed and profitability as they can be applied even if the item of study is not physically available. For this reason, the Department of Experimental and Health Sciences (DCEXS) is focusing its fourth symposium on innovative in silico strategies in biomedical research.

The event, that will take place next Tuesday, 17 November, is organized by the Department together with the Research Programme on Biomedical Informatics (GRIB), a joint programme of the DCEXS and the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM), and with the support of the Biomolecular and Bioinformatics Resources Platform (PRB2), Novartis and Bioinformatics Barcelona.

The DCEXS director, Arcadi Navarro, will welcome participants together with Jorge Cuneo, medical director of Novartis and patron of the 25^th anniversary of UPF, and Ferran Sanz, director of the GRIB. Among the guest speakers are Marta Filizola, principal investigator at the Department of Structural and Chemical Biology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (New York); Joaquin Dopazo, director of the Department of Computational Genomics of the Príncipe Felipe Research Centre (Valencia), and Alfonso Valencia, leader of the Computational and Structural Biology group of the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) and director of the Spanish National Institute of Bioinformatics. The programme is completed with a number of leading researchers in biomedicine that will explore advances in in silico strategies.

The aim of the annual DCEXS symposium is to present the department’s research programmes and promote the education of young scientists, as well as provide a place where researchers can discuss their latest results. This is the fourth year that DCEXS has held the symposium. The fields dealt with at previous editions are neurosciences and genetics, evolutionary biology and cell signalling.

The Fourth DCEXS Symposium is open to everybody interested in biomedical research. However, the number of places available is limited, so you are kindly asked to register.

Links of interest:

- Information on the event

- Full programme

- Registration