Call for papers: VDOS-2026: The 15th International Workshop on Vaccines and Drug Ontology Studies
He, Oliver
CALL FOR PAPERS
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The 15th International Workshop on Vaccines and Drug Ontology Studies (VDOS-2026)
https://vdos-workshop.github.io/vdos2026/
In association with ICBO 2026, July 15-17, 2026, in Washington D.C.
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Hybrid meeting
The 15th International Workshop on Vaccine and Drug Ontology Studies will be held along with the 17th International Conference on Biomedical Ontology (ICBO 2026), co-located with ISMB 2026 at the Washington Hilton in Washington, D.C.
This year, we continue and extend our focus on artificial intelligence's transformative role in drug and vaccine ontology research, with a special emphasis on semantic awareness in the age of generative AI. The workshop explores innovative solutions and challenges in representing and analyzing drugs and vaccines, covering administration, immune responses, adverse events, and more. Key topics include the ontological representation of drugs and vaccines, real-world application challenges, drug components, administration, immune responses, drug interactions, and adverse events in clinical and research settings. A special emphasis will be placed on how AI and large language models can revolutionize ontology studies, enhancing literature mining, meta-analysis, and complex data interpretation. Despite progress, challenges remain in fully representing and utilizing ontologies for research and clinical issues, such as detailed representation of administration and adverse events, drug interactions, and analysis of immune responses. The workshop will bring together experts from clinical, research, and pharma-biotech sectors to discuss solutions to these challenges, aiming to foster advancements in drug development, administration, and the integration of AI in ontological research. Our goal is to contribute to public health improvement by enhancing the understanding and application of drug and vaccine ontologies.
Venue
VDOS 2026 will be held in person at the Washington Hilton in Washington, D.C., co-located with ICBO 2026 and ISMB 2026.
Virtual participation options may also be available.
Conference Dates
Journal Paper submission:
May 15, 2026 (extended from May 1)
EasyChair (full, short, & abstract) submission: June 1, 2026
Notification of acceptance: June 15, 2026
Workshop Time: TBD (July 2026, on or around July 15-17; Half-day)
Registration: Registration will follow ICBO 2026’s instruction:
https://icbo-conference.github.io/icbo2026/registration/ .
Submission to journal: JBMS (continuous; https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/vdosseries)
Alternatively, submission to EasyChair: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=vdos2026
We suggest that you submit your papers directly to JBMS if you think your paper meets the journal paper quality. Please follow the JBMS paper submission instructions, and remember to select the JBMS VDOS collection link (Note: the collection is labeled as vdosseries, but it can still be used for vdos2026 submission). Please note that there is no guarantee that the journal submission will be reviewed before the workshop. If the journal submission is not reviewed in a timely manner, the authors may be asked to submit an abstract to EasyChair so that they may still be able to present the paper in the workshop.
If your paper is more preliminary but is suitable for the conference presentation, we suggest you submit it to our EasyChair. For the EasyChair submissions, all selected full-length papers and short papers will be invited to submit a full revised version to the Journal of Biomedical Semantics (JBMS) VDOS Special Issue. The conference paper format for EasyChair submission will be the same as the format used in ICBO. Contributions must be delivered non-anonymously and as a single PDF file, following the CEUR-ART template.docx file, single column. There is also an Overleaf Template available here.
Submission Format
For the EasyChair paper submission, we will allow
three submission formats:
• full research papers (6-8 pages) format
• work in progress / late-breaking results (2-3 pages), and
• a statement of interest (one page) for podium presentation.
All full-length (6-8 pages) and short-length (2-3 pages) submissions will go through peer reviews by at least two reviewers. The workshop organizers will review the one-page statement-of-interest submissions.
Journal of Biomedical Semantics (JBMS) journal VDOS Collection
As mentioned above, all accepted full-length and selected short papers will be invited to submit a fully revised version to the JBMS VDOS Collection. Alternatively, authors may submit their full-length papers directly to the JBMS VDOS collection at any time (continuous; https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/vdosseries). The JBMS Editorial Office conducts an initial quality check on all submitted manuscripts. The VDOS organizers will then handle the review process and may invite some authors to present at the upcoming VDOS workshop, even if their manuscripts are not accepted for publication. It should be noted that there is no guarantee that submissions to the journal will be reviewed and feedback will be received before the workshop. Submissions made directly to JBMS should adhere to the JBMS guidelines. Please note that JBMS does not impose strict limits on the length and page count of manuscripts.
Organizers
- Cui Tao, PhD [Mayo Clinic; Tao...@mayo.edu]
- Yongqun “Oliver” He, DVM, PhD [Unit for Laboratory Animal Medicine, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Center for Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics, University of Michigan Medical School; yong...@med.umich.edu]
- Junguk Hur, PhD [Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of North Dakota School of Medicine & Health Sciences; jungu...@med.und.edu]
Electronic Mail is not secure, may not be read every day, and should not be used for urgent or sensitive issues
Chuck Woolery
Thank you! Global Health is my highest priority. With mental health on top of that list...given all the death, destruction, and environmental problems created by ambiguous words... like Independence, peace, democracy...
And vaccines aid in protection against humankind’s and bacteria’s greatest threat (other than a mind’s delusional beliefs) viruses.
Your extensive list included “drug interactions” but did not include “, ‘drug interdictions’. I’m guessing there is nothing we can do about that without a change in government systems.
Love the work you all do!
Cw
Chuck Woolery, Former Chair
United Nations Association, Council of Organizations
315 Dean Dr., Rockville, MD 20851
Cell:240-997-2209 ch...@igc.org
Blogs: 435 Campaign: www.435globaljustice.blogspot.com (May 2017 through today)
Dothefreakinmath http://dothefreakinmath.blogspot.com (June 2006 to Nov 2016)
The Trilemma http://trilemma.blogspot.com/ (Oct 2011 to Nov 2013)
“Today the most important thing, in my view, is to study the reasons why humankind does nothing to avert the threats about which it knows so much, and why it allows itself to be carried onward by some kind of perpetual motion. It cannot suffice to invent new machines, new regulations, new institutions. It is necessary to change and improve our understanding of the true purpose of what we are and what we do in the world. Only such an understanding will allow us to develop new models of behavior, new scales of values and goals, and thereby invest the global regulations, treaties, and institutions with a new spirit and meaning.” President Vaclav Havel, Czech Republic.
Here’s a video of optimism if you dare watch it https://www.rethinkx.com/videos
"A human being is part of the whole, called by us 'Universe'; a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation, and a foundation for inner security." -Albert Einstein. As quoted in Quantum Reality, Beyond the New Physics, p. 250.
“The sad truth...is that most evil is done by people who never made up their minds to be or do either evil or good.” Hannah Arendt quoted in The Bulwork.
What are you doing to ensure the funding and achievement of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals by or before the year 2030? Connect the dots! See the web of life! Achieve ‘justice for all’. Or, prepare for the catastrophic consequences. cw
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