A report of the Curriculum Task Force of the ISCB Education Committee.

The International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) Education Committee (EduComm) promotes worldwide education and training in computational biology and bioinformatics and serves as a resource and advisor to organizations interested in developing educational programs.

The topic of curricula for bioinformatics programs has long been of interest to ISCB and EduComm. Dr. Russ Altman, a founding board member and past president of ISCB, has been associated with one of the first bioinformatics degree programs (at Stanford University) and wrote an article on this topic [1]. Dr. Shoba Ranganathan, as chair of EduComm a decade ago, began organizing a yearly Workshop on Education in Bioinformatics (WEB) at Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) meetings that generated exchange of information and many productive discussions. Curriculum development was one aspect of bioinformatics education covered in these sessions [2].