The IQCB, in partnership with ReALity and the JGU Scotland HUB × SULSA, is pleased to announce "AI in Bioscience: Converging Interests and Joint Solutions", a workshop by and for young researchers, taking place on 27 and 28 October 2026 in FAVORITE Parkhotel Mainz, Germany.

Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming research in bioscience, yet meaningful collaboration between computational and experimental scientists often remains hindered by disciplinary boundaries, differing research cultures, and unresolved methodological challenges. Rather than showcasing completed projects, this workshop will provide a dedicated forum for PhD candidates, postdoctoral researchers, and selected keynote speakers from bioscience and AI to openly discuss current bottlenecks, unmet needs, and emerging opportunities at the interface of both fields.

Through interactive discussions and participant-driven problem-sharing sessions, the workshop aims to identify common challenges, such as limitations in biological data analysis, issues of model validation and interpretability, the entire scientific research workflow, and barriers to translating computational advances into experimental practice. By focusing on problems rather than achievements, the event seeks to foster mutual understanding and establish a shared foundation for future interdisciplinary collaboration.

As part of registration, attendees are invited to submit a "Blind Spot": a dataset they don’t know how to model, or an algorithm in search of a bioscience use case. Submitted Blind Spots form the basis for selection, as places are limited to around 50 participants. The results of these two days – the clustered gaps, breakout-group findings, and literature search – will be carried forward into a separate follow-up retreat. There they are the basis for a community-driven white paper on future teaching of biosciences.

What We Aim to Achieve

• Deepen dialogue and mutual understanding between researchers in bioscience and artificial intelligence.
• Identify and cluster shared methodological and conceptual challenges (" Blind Spots") presented by speakers and attendees, as a basis for interdisciplinary approaches.
• Bring academic and industry representatives together for direct exchange.
• Produce a structured summary of gaps and breakout-group results to carry forward into a separate, subsequent retreat.
• Lay the groundwork for a concrete teaching curriculum (developed during the subsequent retreat that is not part of this workshop), that prepares the next generation of quantitative bioscientists to bridge exactly these gaps.

Who Should Attend

The workshop is aimed at PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers with hands-on experience in bioscience or computational research, alongside selected keynote speakers from bioscience and AI, and industry representatives. Participation is open to researchers from outside JGU Mainz and from abroad.

Keynote Speakers

Dr. Hajk Drost – University of Dundee
Dr. Georges Hattab – Robert Koch-Institute
Dr. Konrad Rawlik – University of Edinburgh
Dr. Beck Strohmer – University of St Andrews, University of Copenhagen
Alexander Treber – Boehringer Ingelheim International GmbH
Dr. Paula Wagner Egea – BioMed X Paris

In order to register as a participant, please fill out this registration form by Monday, 28 September 2026.
No registration fee.

The workshop is funded by the Ministry of Science, Further Education and Health of Rhineland-Pfalz and the Scottish Government, and organised by the Scotland HUB Mainz and SULSA as part of the Rheinland-Pfalz & Scotland Life Sciences Partnership.

We’re excited to announce an upcoming full-day community meetup dedicated to long-read sequencing technologies. The event will bring together researchers, bioinformaticians, and industry professionals working with long-read approaches to share insights, present their work, and connect with the local community.

The program will feature scientific talks and application-focused presentations spanning a broad range of topics, including genetics, epigenetics, transcriptomics, epitranscriptomics, and other applications enabled by long-read sequencing.

The registration deadline has expired.

Whether you’re an expert in long-read sequencing or just beginning to explore its potential, this event offers a chance for researchers, industry professionals, and startups to exchange ideas, showcase innovations, and connect within the regional long-read genomics community.

Find the agenda here and the flyer here

Joint free of charge / registration mandatory workshop by IQCB and Fraunhofer IESE (Kaiserslautern) with involvement of the Institute of Molecular Biology, the ReALity Initiative and the Center for Healthy Aging.

The workshop will explore how high-integrity software engineering can accelerate basic research and the clinical translation of advanced therapies. The short talks are aligned with the following thematic pillars:

1. The “Reliability Gap” in AI:
As AI gains prominence in research and we move toward AI-driven personalized digital health, how do we ensure safety, reliability, and reproducibility? How can high-integrity data engineering ensure that machine learning outcomes are reproducible and verifiable?

2. Digital Twins and Modeling Biological Complexity:
Where molecular modeling meets systems engineering to create predictive models for system- or patient-level responses.

3. Translating Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs) to the Bedside:
Mainz plays a prominent role in the development of gene therapy medicinal products, CAR-T cell workflows, and tissue regeneration. Moving from experimental protocols to standardized clinical products presents challenges where interdisciplinary interactions are often transformative.

4. Engineering for an Aging Society:
How can we better integrate personalized medicine into long-term care? We seek perspectives on developing AI solutions that remain robust and ethical when applied to the multi-morbidities of an aging population.

Find the agenda here.

Wednesday, 04 March 2:00 pm - 5:00 pm
 

🎯 What you'll walk away with

• A local Git repository on your computer and a remote project on GitLab.
• The ability to clone, commit, branch, merge and resolve conflicts.
• Knowledge of how to organize scripts and code for personal and collaborative projects.
• First experience with some of the collaborative tools in GitLab:  issues, merge requests and wikis.

Read more

We look forward to welcoming you all again for the second time at the Institute of Molecular Biology (IMB).

Registration closed!

Read more

Tuesday, 28 October 2:30 pm - 5:30 pm
 

🎯 What you'll walk away with

• A local Git repository on your computer and a remote project on GitLab.
• The ability to clone, commit, branch, merge and resolve conflicts.
• Knowledge of how to organize scripts and code for personal and collaborative projects.
• First experience with some of the collaborative tools in GitLab:  issues, merge requests and wikis.

Stay tuned: more information including the agenda and the link to the registration will follow.

Scientific organizers: Peter Baumann and Paul Czodrowski

Flyer

Read more

Please register here by May 5. Abstracts can be submitted until 30 April!

With great support from NFDI4BIOIMAGE, the I3D:bio project, SFB 1551, and the IQCB, this workshop will focus on the management of image data from various advanced imaging techniques, including light microscopy, electron microscopy, and medical imaging (X-ray, CT, MRI, etc.). The workshop will feature OMERO, a powerful data management platform designed to streamline the organization, storage, annotation, and analysis of complex image datasets. Additionally, you will learn about the existing infrastructure and the ongoing initiative to establish an OMERO server at JGU, which will soon be accessible to all researchers on campus.

The hands-on session, scheduled from 2 PM to 4 PM, is limited to 20 participants. Therefore, prior registration is required. Please register here

This Gutenberg Workshop will provide a fascinating journey through the world of automated scientific discovery, driven by artificial intelligence. It is organized around the following four main themes:

1. Automation and autonomy in science

2. Applications of AI, with an emphasis on, but not exclusively, the life sciences

3. Equation discovery, symbolic regression, and the induction of process models

4. Integration efforts

Read more

Flyer

Registration

with

Heiko Runz, EMBL Heidelberg, Heidelberg-Mannheim Health + Life Science Alliance      
Juha Karjalainen, Regeneron Genetics Center/ FIMM / Broad Institute      
Helena Cornu, Open Targets / European Bioinformatics Institute

In this hands-on session, you will have the opportunity to explore and analyze human genetic and      
genomic datasets to address questions related to specific genes or topics of your choice. Learn how      
to extract genetic hypotheses regarding rare & common diseases related to your genes of interest      
from human population cohorts.

Target group: Advanced Life Science researchers from JGU, IMB, LIR, UM, TRON

Fee: 50 EUR

Also join the “Under The Hood” Seminar with Juha Karjalainen after the workshop at 3:30 PM. Read more here

This winter school aims to explore the role of self-organization in machine learning, focusing on the latest research and applications. The topic will be based on the research.

This workshop aims to bring together experts from a broad range of different perspectives and backgrounds regarding their scientific research and AI driven computational methods with early researchers to strengthen the interdisciplinary dialog for science informed modelling and machine learning techniques.

Read more here

Link to Program