The 5th Young Bioinformatics PI Workshop (2016), jointly organized by Beijing Institute of Genomics (BIG) and Beijing Institutes of Life Science, CAS, was successfully held from Aug 12th to Aug 13th in Beijing China. The aim of the workshop is to appeal young scientists working on bioinformatics home and abroad, facilitating academic exchanges among all participants with specific focus on latest progress and research results. The Young Bioinformatics PI Workshop series was launched in 2012, has been held annually in different cities in China (Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Wuhan) and will be held in Xi’an and Shanghai in the next two years. At this year’s workshop, a total of thirteen high level academic reports have been given by 13 young scientists from universities, research institutes, and clinical hospitals in China. There are more than 80 field experts and 220 students participating in this event. The workshop reports focus on bioinformatics field with applications to big data integration and mining in cutting-edge studies. The workshop starts with a talk on CRISPR screening for achieving accurate cancer treatment, presented by Prof. Xiaole Shirley Liu from Harvard University who is the initiator of the Young Bioinformatics PI Workshop. The workshop ends with a talk presented by Wenming Zhao, Deputy Director of the BIG Data Center (BIGD) for Life & Health Sciences in BIG, CAS. He introduced the BIGD database resources, with particular focus on the Genome Sequence Archive (GSA), which serves as a primary archive of genome sequencing data for worldwide institutions and laboratories.
