🎥 Highlights from #BITS2026 in Padova! 🇮🇹 Thank you to all speakers, participants, sponsors, organizers, and volunteers who made this event possible! 🚀 #BITS2026 #Bioinformatics #ComputationalBiology #Genomics #LifeScience #ScienceCommunity #Padova #Italy

Final talk of the Symposium by Samuele Boga, presenting MetaBench: a benchmarking study evaluating the performance of different metabarcoding approaches 📊 #YoungInfoLife #Bioinformatics #YoungResearch

Time for Omar Almolla, who will show us how the PIUMA open-source R package can make Topological Data Analysis accessible to the biomedical research community. 🧬 #YoungInfoLife #Bioinformatics #YoungResearch

Next on the Young BITS Symposium, Gaia Faggin will talk about Cell Marker Accordion 2.0, an entropy-driven framework for interpretable cell type annotation, clustering, and spatial deconvolution. #YoungInfoLife #Bioinformatics #YoungResearch

Closing #BITS2026, time for the YOUNG BITS, ISCB RSG Italy and Young InfoLife (CINI) Symposium, chaired by Davide Bressan and Grete Francesca Privitera. First contribution of the symposium by Virginia Quadrotta 🧬 #YoungInfoLife #Bioinformatics #YoungResearch

Big congratulations to the #BITS2026 Poster Prize winner! 🏆 🥇 Francesco Maria Antonio Micocci Well done👏

📢 Destination confirmed: Catania will officially host the #BITS2027 on 16-18 June! Stay tuned for details, and see you there! #Bioinformatics #Catania #ComputationalBiology

Sergio Vulterini at #BITS2026 presents molecular dynamics studies on human Ferroportin, revealing how pathogenic mutations disrupt its conformational transitions and lead to hereditary hemochromatosis. #Bioinformatics #StructuralBiology #MolecularDynamics #IronHomeostasis

At #BITS2026, we had the pleasure of recognising Filippo Utro for his outstanding BITS lecture: "From Classical to Quantum: New Computational Paradigms for Life Sciences". Thank you for your significant scientific contribution to this year’s conference! 👏 @filippoutro.bsky.social

Invited talk by Prof. Gábor Erdős (Eötvös Loránd University) at #BITS2026! A transformer-based graph neural network for zero-shot prediction of protein thermodynamic properties, from disordered proteins to absolute stability values. #Bioinformatics #ProteinScience #GraphNeuralNetworks

The afternoon session chaired by Pasqualina D'Ursi and Alexander Monzon at #BITS2026 is all about proteins! Computational methods to study protein properties, dynamics, and interactions take the stage. #Bioinformatics #ProteinScience #StructuralBiology

Sequence-based or structure-based for antibody interaction site prediction? Carlo Ferrari compares these frameworks and investigates the impact of representation design and model choice on performance. #Bioinformatics #Antibodies #BITS2026 #StructuralBiology

Tania Alonso-Vásquez explores the complex dynamics of bacterial communication at #BITS2026 #Bioinformatics #SystemsBiology #Microbiology #BacterialDynamics

Gioele Lazzari joins the #BITS2026 to address ongoing challenges in genome-scale metabolic modeling. His talk introduces GRAP, a novel tool designed to improve the overall reliability of systems biology workflows 🧬 #Bioinformatics #SystemsBiology #MetabolicModeling

BITS Lecture at #BITS2026 with Filippo Utro from IBM T.J. Watson Research Center! Quantum and hybrid quantum-classical methods for life sciences, from immunotherapy to omics data, plus a discussion on where quantum computing stands today. #Bioinformatics #QuantumComputing #SystemsBiology

Next up at #BITS2026: "Systems Biology and Multi-Omics", chaired by Prof. Enrico Lavezzo and Prof. Francesca Cordero. Quantum computing, personalised models, metabolic networks and more. #Bioinformatics #SystemsBiology #MultiOmics

Reproducibility in bioinformatics is broken because software environments silently change over time. Luca Alessandri presents REBEL, an open-source tool that detects dependencies, archives locally and rebuilds identical environments on any machine. #Bioinformatics #BITS2026 #ReproducibleResearch

Not all survival models are created equal, and comparing them is not straightforward. Giovanni Birolo at #BITS2026 presents SurvCraft, a framework to fairly compare approaches one piece at a time. Simpler methods can still compete. #Bioinformatics #SurvivalAnalysis

Wageesha Widuranga Waththe Liyanage presents LLMsFold at #BITS2026, a computational framework that combines large language models with structure-based biophysical simulations for de novo drug design. #Bioinformatics #DrugDesign #LLM #GenerativeAI

Happy to welcome Prof. Christine Orengo from @ucl.ac.uk for the opening keynote of the last day of #BITS2026! Prof. Orengo will explore protein evolution and design through the lens of CATH and TED, a new resource for the structural biology community #Bioinformatics #StructuralBiology

Final day of talks at #BITS2026! First session: "AI, Models and Tools", chaired by Prof. Stefano Toppo and Prof. Enrica Calura #AI #Bioinformatics #MachineLearning

That’s a wrap on today's sessions! 🎬 Time for the #BITS2026 Social Dinner, the perfect way to unwind after a packed day, catch up with colleagues and enjoy a great evening together. #Bioinformatics #Networking #SocialDinner #BITS2026

Eva König will share a scalable framework to integrate genetic data across diverse cohorts and ancestries, applied to calcium and phosphate as use cases, demonstrating the power of standardized large-scale analyses 🧬 #Bioinformatics #Genomics #BITS2026

Alessandra Luciani joins this #BITS2026 session to show how metatranscriptomics can leverage non-human reads to map active brain microbial communities, revealing new insights into the gut-brain axis and Alzheimer’s disease 🧠 #Bioinformatics #Metatranscriptomics

Sandro Gepiro Contaldo discusses how deep sequencing technologies and dedicated bioinformatics workflows can help us guide effective therapeutic decisions against opportunistic pathogens🧬 #Bioinformatics #InfectiousDiseases #GenomicVariants #DataScience #BITS2026

Veronica Guerrini presents a Burrows-Wheeler Transform indexing approach at #BITS2026, a key step forward in managing complex pangenome data for targeted clinical applications. 📊 #Bioinformatics #Genomics #Algorithms #PrecisionMedicine

Next up on the #BITS2026 stage, Giorgia Bucciarelli will dive into the complex landscape of RNA modifications presenting the RNAEventProfiler platform-independent tool, ensuring reliable statistical testing for differential epitranscriptomics 🧬 #Bioinformatics #CancerResearch

Matteo Marchionni will present scPleiades, a new multi-omics analytical pipeline designed to overcome high noise levels, dropout events, and signal contamination in single-cell and spatial omics for more accurate cell phenotyping. 🧬📊 #Bioinformatics #scRNAseq #BITS2026

How do we turn massive spatial omics data into clinically relevant biomarkers? Prof. Silvio Bicciato from University of Padova (@unipd.bsky.social) takes the stage at #BITS2026 to outline the computational challenges and opportunities in imaging-based spatial omics. #Bioinformatics #CancerResearch

Time for a coffee break and the afternoon Poster Session at #BITS2026! ☕📊 #Bioinformatics #Networking #PosterSession

Don’t miss the invited talk by Prof. Ivan G. Costa from @rwth.bsky.social at #BITS2026! Prof. Costa will discuss how combining optimal transport with deep learning enables robust sample-level analysis of single-cell disease atlases. #Bioinformatics #SpatialOmics #SingleCell

Moving forward with the #BITS2026 program! Up next: "Omics data, methods and applications", chaired by Prof. Barbara Di Camillo and Prof. Cinzia Pizzi #Bioinformatics #MultiOmics #DataScience #ComputationalBiology

Elia Giuseppe Ceroni presenting a self-supervised framework based on a 3D Masked Autoencoder that maps intratumoral subregions directly from pre-operative MRI, with no molecular or clinical supervision required. #Bioinformatics #CancerResearch #Glioblastoma #MRI #BITS2026

What drives glioblastoma cells to invade or proliferate? Roberto Pagliarini at #BITS2026 decodes the transcriptomic landscape of the "Go or Grow" dichotomy in patient-derived Glioma Stem Cells. #Bioinformatics #CancerResearch #Glioblastoma #Transcriptomics

Lorenzo Amir Nemati Fard at #BITS2026 on how coordinated cell-cell interaction circuits are rewired in cancer and their link to patient survival and immunotherapy response. #Bioinformatics #CancerResearch

Michele Marziliano presents a computational workflow to characterise tumor microenvironment remodeling in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer using CODEX spatial multiplex proteomics, capturing the spatial organisation of the TME in a treated mouse model. #Bioinformatics #BITS2026

Recharge during the lunch buffet and join us for the group photo at #BITS2026! 📸 A great moment to exchange ideas and capture a memory with the community. #Bioinformatics #Networking #Community

Emanuela Scafuri at #BITS2026 will show how integrating more omics layers does not always help. Her work identifies which ones actually improve patient stratification in Alzheimer's disease, using clinical indices as a reference. #Bioinformatics #MultiOmics #AlzheimersDisease

Paolo Bresolin presents his work at #BITS2026 on learning general-purpose embeddings from tumor phylogenetic trees using Graph Neural Networks. #Bioinformatics #CancerResearch #GraphNeuralNetworks #TumorEvolution

Next session today at #BITS2026, focused on "Cancer Bioinformatics", chaired by Prof. Fabio Vandin and Prof. Mattia Forcato. #Bioinformatics #CancerResearch #Oncology #PrecisionMedicine #BITS2026 #DataScience

Time for the invited talk by Prof. Francesca Ciccarelli @qmbci.bsky.social & @crick.ac.uk) at #BITS2026! Prof. Ciccarelli will explore the spatial determinants of immunotherapy response in colorectal cancer, explaining why space matters in patient treatment. #Bioinformatics #CancerResearch

Time to network and discover new insights during our morning Poster Session and Coffee Break ☕! #BITS2026 #Bioinformatics #Networking #Research

Matteo Andriolo at #BITS2026 presents ArchetypalC, a high-performance C++ implementation of Archetypal Analysis for large-scale single-cell data. #Bioinformatics #ScRNAseq

Next up on stage, Mehdi Zoubiri presents APICURON, an open-source platform that recognises scientific contributions beyond publications, from data curation to software development, and makes them visible through ORCID integration. #BITS2026 #OpenScience #Bioinformatics

Giada Malatesta at #BITS2026 on the role of ICSC and the IT4LIA AI Factory in building a federated, AI-ready ecosystem for biomedical data in Italy. #Bioinformatics #ResearchInfrastructure

Second round of talks today at #BITS2026 on “Databases, interoperability and research infrastructure”, chaired by Prof. Silvio Tosatto and Prof. Damiano Piovesan #Bioinformatics #AI #ResearchInfrastructure #DataInteroperability #HighPerformanceComputing

Seconda day at #BITS2026! Honored to welcome Prof. Paul Thomas (@usc.edu & @sib.swiss) for an insightful keynote session Prof. Thomas will explore how bioinformatics & biocuration are reshaping gene function prediction #Bioinformatics #Genomics #GeneFunction #Biocuration

Second Day of #BITS2026! Stay tuned!🧬

First, a quick coffee break to recharge, then it's time for the BITS Members Assembly: time to reflect, discuss, and plan together the future of the Italian bioinformatics community. #BITS2026

Young communities take the stage at #BITS2026 with the presentation of YOUNG BITS, RSG-Italy, SIB Young, and CINI Young-InfoLife. #BITS2026 #Bioinformatics #YoungResearchers