NSF Student Travel Grant for 2018 Computational Modeling in Biology Network (COMBINE) Forum

数据交换标准对任何领域的发展都至关重要。它们使研究人员和从业人员能够可靠地交换信息，应用各种工具解决问题，并重现科学结果。生物学计算建模网络（COMBINE）创建于2010年，旨在组织系统生物学的标准化工作。这项工作包括系统生物学标记语言（SBML），用于系统生物学家创建的数学模型；以及用于描述合成生物学家创建的遗传设计的合成生物学开放语言（SBOL）。虽然系统生物学和合成生物学有许多独特的要求，但也有许多重叠的特征，例如需要构建数学模型、描述路径和提供视觉表示。COMBINE会议将两个领域的代表聚集在一起，使这些社区能够共享现有的标准、软件和其他基础设施。该项目将帮助来自这两个社区的美国学生，特别是那些刚刚参与这些努力或来自代表性不足群体的学生，在10月8日至12日在马萨诸塞州波士顿的波士顿大学举行的2018年COMBINE论坛上会面（http://co.mbine.org/events/COMBINE_2018）。像这样的研讨会有助于在这些标准的开发中取得进展。目前，大多数标准化工作要么没有资金支持，要么只有非常有限的支持。实际上，这些标准的成功是由于许多人贡献时间参与讨论、编写规范、担任标准编辑和参加研讨会。许多从事这些标准开发的个人都是美国的学生，否则他们很难找到参加这次会议的资金。因此，该项目将帮助支持这些在美国学习这些标准的学生前往波士顿参加COMBINE 2018的差旅费。这不仅对这些学生来说是宝贵的经验，而且还将极大地增强合成生物学社区的目标，即将合成生物学研究人员与系统生物学研究人员聚集在一起，从而实现集成标准和共享软件和基础设施。本次研讨会的目标将是继续(1)发展系统和合成生物学研究人员之间的协同关系；(2)为系统和合成生物学的标准开发提供更紧密的整合；(3)与建模人员和实验人员进行联系；(4)讨论如何协调努力，倡导在出版物和档案数据库中使用标准，以提高科学结果的可重复性。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Standards for data exchange are critical to the development of any field. They enable researchers and practitioners to exchange information reliably, apply a variety of tools to their problems, and reproduce scientific results. The COmputational MOdeling in Biology NEtwork (COMBINE) was created in 2010 to organize standardization efforts for systems biology. This effort includes, among others, the systems biology markup language (SBML) for mathematical models created by systems biologists; and the synthetic biology open language (SBOL) for describing genetic designs created by synthetic biologists. While systems biology and synthetic biology have many unique requirements, there are also a lot of overlapping features such as the need to construct mathematical models, describe pathways, and provide visual representations. The COMBINE meetings bring together representatives from both fields to enable these communities to share existing standards, software, and other infrastructure. This project will help enable US-based students from these two communities, particularly those new to these efforts or from underrepresented groups, to meet together at the 2018 COMBINE Forum to be held at Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts on October 8th to 12th (http://co.mbine.org/events/COMBINE_2018). Workshops like this one are instrumental in making progress in the development of these standards. Currently, most standardization efforts are either unfunded or only have very limited support. Indeed, the success of these standards has been due to the donation of time from many individuals to participate in discussions, write specifications, serve as standard editors, and attend workshops. Many of these individuals working on the development of these standards are students based in the US who would otherwise find it difficult to find the funds to attend this meeting. Therefore, this project would help support travel expenses for these US-based students working on these standards to travel to Boston for COMBINE 2018. Not only would this be a valuable experience for these students, but it would also greatly enhance the synthetic biology community's goal of bringing together researchers in synthetic biology with those working in systems biology leading to integrated standards and shared software and infrastructure. The goals of this workshop will be to continue to (1) develop synergistic relationships between systems and synthetic biology researchers; (2) provide a tighter integration of standard development for systems and synthetic biology; (3) perform outreach to modelers and experimentalists; and (4) discuss a coordinated effort to advocate the use of standards in publications and archival databases to enhance reproducibility of scientific results.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.