A mini-workshop on statistical machine learning and biosciences was held at Beijing Institute of Genomics (BIG), Chinese Academy of Sciences, on May 30th and 31st, 2012. Experts from four international high reputational institutes, Professor ZHANG Zhang from Beijing Institute of Genomics (BIG), Professor GAO Xin and Professor ZHANG Xiangliang from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Professor HUANG Jianhua and Professor LIANG Faming from IAMCS (Texas A&M University), and Professor JING Bing-Yi from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) were brought together to interact and explore areas of potential collaborations among the four institutes. During the two-day workshop, researchers presented their top-edge studies respectively on methodologies and applications of statistical machine learning methods in biosciences, and brought up solutions to practical problems in life sciences. At the end of the workshop, the four institutes reached an agreement to work in collaboration with each other to solve critical biological issues using statistical machine learning methods. Discussing in the meeting (Image by TENG Mingjing)