The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has announced a call for abstracts for an NIH-supported special track at Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) 2026, a premier international conference in computational biology and bioinformatics. The conference will be held July 12–16, 2026, in Washington, DC.  

The NIH-sponsored track, titled Social and Technical Infrastructure to Advance Health Research, is scheduled for Monday, July 13, from 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM (ET).

Abstracts should highlight NIH-funded projects that develop social and technical infrastructure, including the application and integration of artificial intelligence (AI), to advance data science and health research.

Topics of interest include:

• Platforms, Ecosystems, and Computational Frameworks
• Software Communities of Practice
• Data & Software Reuse
• Advancing Scholarly Metrics (or “Incentives & Impact”)

Abstracts should be submitted no later than May 8, 2026, to OD-ISMB-SpecialTrack@nih.gov. Submissions must not exceed 300 words and should clearly describe the motivation, methodology, key results, and impact.

Each submission should also include:

• Title (maximum 25 words)
• Name(s) of speaker(s)
• Institutional affiliation(s)
• NIH-funded award number

Submissions will be evaluated based on their complementarity and alignment with the topics of interest. Notification of decisions will be sent by May 15, 2026.