AR-BIC 2023 to Explore the Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Public Health

9th annual conference will be held March 13-14, 2023

The Arkansas Bioinformatics Consortium (AR-BIC) is hosting its annual meeting on March 13 and 14, 2023, at the Wyndham Riverfront Hotel in North Little Rock, AR. The ninth meeting of the AR-BIC is expected to draw hundreds of researchers, data scientists, students, and academic leaders to central Arkansas.

AR-BIC’s theme for 2023 is Bioinformatics, Big Data, AI, and Public Health: An Integrated World. AR-BIC will feature keynote presentations from leading voices in machine learning, artificial intelligence, advanced medicine, and other related disciplines.

“More and more, 21st century healthcare relies on enormous streams of data,” explained Dr. Weida Tong, of the Division of Bioinformatics and Biostatistics at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA's) National Center for Toxicological Research (NCTR) and Vice-Chair of the AR-BIC Advisory Council. “These types of data tend to be complex and multi-dimensional. Artificial Intelligence approaches to synthesize, interpret, and leverage data have demonstrated significant impact across a broad range of scientific disciplines.”

 With a lineup of lecturers and speakers from various disciplines within the bioinformatics community, the meeting will present the current state-of-the-art practice and ongoing efforts in applying AI in healthcare and enabling efficient data mining to promote public health. Headlining the event will be Dr. Namandjé Bumpus, the U.S. FDA Chief Scientist. The Office of the Chief Scientist supports, among other things, scientific collaborations, laboratory safety, the transfer of FDA inventions to the private sector, scientific integrity in FDA policy- and decision-making, and its core research component—NCTR—which generates the vital data that the FDA requires for its regulatory decision-making. 

Keynote presenters at AR-BIC 2023 include Drs. Joseph Sanford and Kevin Sexton at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) who will bridge the human touch and clinical informatics in their talk, “Algorithmic Medicine: New Opportunities to Increase Patient Trust”. The final keynote will be Dr. Ruth Roberts from the University of Birmingham (UK), a global expert in integrated toxicology. Additionally, two pre-conference AI workshops, one on natural language processing and another on image analysis, will be available. Rounding out the conference is a poster competition with cash prizes.

“As all sectors of our nation’s economy increasingly digitize, bioinformatics and AI have become a fast-growing industry that Arkansas continues investing in to build our competitiveness,” said Bryan Barnhouse, Chair of the AR-BIC Advisory Council and President & CEO of the Arkansas Research Alliance (ARA). “AR-BIC’s substantial increase in popularity of the last decade is an indicator that Arkansas is here to stay in the knowledge economy.”

Those who wish to attend this year’s AR-BIC meeting may register online (ar-bic.aralliance.org/register/). The event begins on Monday, March 13 with workshops from 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM, with an Opening Ceremony starting at 3:00 P.M. The meeting concludes the next day, Tuesday March 14, at 3:00 P.M. with closing remarks and poster session winners announced.

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FAST FACTS

·     The 9th Annual AR-BIC meets on March 13-14, 2023 at the Wyndham Riverfront Hotel in North Little Rock, AR

·     The Consortium’s theme for 2023: Bioinformatics, Big Data, AI, and Public Health: An Integrated World

·     The first AR-BIC meeting was in 2015, and has since grown to become an event hosting upwards of 300 bioinformatic professionals, academics, and students

·     You can learn more about AR-BIC here: https://ar-bic.aralliance.org/. Those who wish to attend this year’s AR-BIC meeting may register online at www.ar-bic.aralliance.org/register