An interdisciplinary conference dedicated to the Critical Assessment of Microarray Data Analysis is soliciting contributions for its eighth annual event on December 4-6, 2008 at Boku University in Vienna, Austria. Over the past seven years, CAMDA has been a forum for academic researchers and industry practitioners to share their research and experience in microarray data analysis. Numerous new algorithms have been reported at the CAMDA conference.

This year, we will accept papers on analyses performed on datasets other than the challenge datasets, however, we will only consider break-through research on non-challenge dataset papers for oral presentation.

Challenge Dataset

We propose this dataset which deals with the response of human vascular endothelial cells to serum withdrawal, triggering apoptosis. The dataset is typical in that a complex biological phenomenon is probed by a timecourse with only a few measurements. It provides the classical challenge of microarray data analysis of extracting insight in a data space of very uneven dimensionalities. The challenge in this case is to identify candidate regulators.

Please see the contest dataset page for more information.

Any Dataset

We will be accepting papers that analyze datasets other than the challenge dataset. These datasets may be generated by the lab presenting the analysis or by another group, but it is expected that the dataset be publicly available should the paper be selected for presentation. Novel approaches to analyzing the dataset, as well as integrating various data types are welcome and encouraged. However, at least one component of the dataset must be gene expression data, and of critical importance is the biologically meaningful interpretation of the data. We will only consider break-through research for oral presentation.

Submission Rules

• All abstracts submitted for presentation at CAMDA must be previously unpublished original work.
• You will be required to sign a copyright release for the final paper for publication in the proceedings book. If we are unable to obtain a publisher or if your paper is not deemed to be of sufficient quality by the editors, your copyright will be returned to you to use for your own publication purposes.
• You are, however, allowed to present your work at other conferences, but no other publication of your material is allowed.
• Authors are encouraged to reference the proceedings of earlier years (Methods for Microarray Analysis, volume I,II and III, Kluwer, Boston, MA) for the format and style of the contributions.
• Researchers must agree to make the analytical results and procedures publicly available. The disclosure of the analytical code or executables can be either in the form of commercial software, shareware, or freeware.

Paper Submission Format

An extended abstract is necessary for the selection process by the scientific committee. The extended abstract should include key results, figures, and tables. For original research papers the abstract page limit is 5. If your abstract is not in this format your paper will not be accepted.

Abstracts will include title (in bold), authors, affiliation and contact mail. Presenting author name will be underlined. Recommended letter type is Times New Roman pt12.

All papers should be submitted electronically in MS Word, or PDF format at the site: http://www.easychair.org/CAMDA2008. The deadline for submission is October 22, 2008.

All authors will have an opportunity to update and revise their manuscripts after the conference. Final papers to be published in the CAMDA 2008 proceedings will be due January 31, 2009. Publication of final papers is entirely at the discretion of the editors based on quality of submission.

Presentation Format

Accepted papers will be invited for poster or oral presentation in the CAMDA 2008 conference. The authors will be notified by November 1, 2008.

• Poster presentation: The maximum size of the poster is 1m (wide) x 1.50m (height)
• Oral presentation: The time allocated for each presentation will be 25 minutes followed by 10 minutes of questions and answers. This time limit may change based on the number of submissions.

CAMDA PaperPresentation Guidelines

Feedback of previous CAMDA attendees indicates the need for emphasis of biological relevance in addition to the data mining methodology. The submitted contributions are encouraged to include:

• The proposed analytical objective (problems to be solved).
• A brief summary of the analytical effort (how to solve the problem).
• This may include the data preprocessing tasks such as data normalization, and data extraction, data mining steps and algorithms used, as well as the evaluation criteria.
• Interpretation of results and presentation of discoveries in a biological context.
• Discussion of the merits, assumptions, and limitations of your approach
• Conclusions

Questions concerning the CAMDA 2008 Call for Papers should be directed to: camda2008@easychair.org.