The National Bioscience Database Center (NBDC) held the Symposium of Database Togo (Integration) online on October 5, 2021. As NBDC commemorated 10 years since its launch, we planned a keynote lecture, talk sessions, and poster presentations and drew many participants from various organizations.

Toshihisa Takagi, Director of NBDC, delivered the 10th anniversary keynote speech titled “What NBDC has done and left undone in this decade.” He spoke regarding the background and purpose of its establishment, outcomes gained, and issues that remain unsolved.

In the talk sessions, Dr. Takashi Ito (Research Supervisor, Database Integration Coordination Program of NBDC and Professor, Department of Basic Medicine, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University) and Dr. Susumu Goto (Vice Director, Database Center for Life Science) gave lectures. In the second half of the session, Director Takagi and Drs. Ito and Goto held a panel discussion facilitated by Mari Iwashima, Director of the Department of Planning and Management of NBDC.

Dr. Ito reported past activities of the bioinformatics-related programs supported by JST and issues regarding program sustainability and dealing with new types of data. Furthermore, Dr. Goto’s lecture was on the application of machine learning and development of a framework for database integration and connecting it to dataset-related outcomes. In the panel discussion, they discussed about the current situation of database development and its future prospective.

There were 51 poster presentations by researchers and engineers working in development, operation, and utilization of the database. The posters were displayed on the homepage one week prior to the symposium, which enabled the participants to view them in advance, facilitating smooth discussions with presenters on the day of the presentation. We also launched special web pages dedicated to the poster session, which introduced each poster with its abstract. Furthermore, since we managed the participation of as many people as possible in the interesting presentations by preparing links to the independent online rooms for each presenter, participants were seamlessly able to visit the online rooms.

The symposium received a total of 277 attendants and concluded successfully through the planning and execution of the event’s activities described above. NBDC will actively commit to planning events and disseminating information on data integration in the life science field, which is the foundation of the digitalization policy of the government.

For more information on the poster presentation session, please refer to the following link:

Symposium of Database Togo (Integration) 2021

https://biosciencedbc.jp/event/symposium/togo2021/

Videos and reference materials of the lectures will be available on the website soon.