Establishment of “The South African Bioinformatics Student Council” and Activity Highlights

Abstract

The South African Bioinformatics Student Council (SASBiSC) in bioinformatics has been set up to increase the visibility of bioinformatics as well as to filter information to students within the field regarding job, funding and workshop opportunities as they arise. This is a short description of the process of setting up a national Student Council for Bioinformatics in South Africa, affiliating to the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB). We also report two examples of activities that were carried out over the last two years that are: 1) participation in the SciFest Africa; and 2) the organisation of the first Bioinformatics Student Symposium.  We hope that our experience and methods for the creation of SASBiSC and of collaborative communities can be useful to others who might want to do the same.