COMBINE Australia

COMBINE is a student-run Australian organisation for researchers in computational biology, bioinformatics, and related fields. COMBINE is the student subcommittee of The Australian Bioinformatics And Computational Biology Society (ABACBS) as well as the official International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) Regional Student Group (RSG) for Australia. We aim to bring together students and early-career researchers from the computational and life sciences for networking, collaboration, and professional development. Australia has many research institutes, each with their own cohorts of students. Aside from conferences, there are few opportunities that bring these students together, allowing them to discover the different kinds of research going on at other institutes. COMBINE aims to bridge this institutional divide by organising seminars, workshops and social events, as well as the yearly COMBINE Student Symposium. Together, these events allow students to connect with each other and build a network in a casual environment. With support of sponsors such as the Convergence Science Network and the Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative we have run a number of events and received glowing feedback from participants who used our events to create connections to their colleagues from other universities and institutes.