The BioVis meetings are intended to educate, inspire, and engage visualization researchers in problems in biological data visualization, as well as bioinformatics and biology researchers in state-of-the-art visualization research.
There are multiple ways to participate in BioVis through conferences and ongoing events. This year, the main BioVis event will be at ISMB as a Community of Special Interest (COSI) in July 16, 2026 in Washington, DC, USA. A smaller workshop event will be held at IEEE VIS on November 2 - 7, 2025 in Vienna, Austria. These events serve as a platform for researchers from biology, bioinformatics, and information visualization fields to increase the impact of data visualization approaches in biology, and to initiate interdisciplinary collaborations. Get involved in our events at a conference or challenge (or both!).
Join us on Wednesday, 18th of February at 5pm Berlin / 4 pm London: “Building Explainable AI Tools for Biomedical Applications“ Grace Guo, Harvard University, https://gracegsy.github.io/
Abstract Advances in deep learning have yielded powerful models for diagnosis and prognosis, yet their “black-box” nature continues to stall clinical adoption—especially in biomedicine, where mistakes have life-changing consequences. Many prior studies have demonstrated how visualizations can be used to provide powerful explanations of generic AI models by translating abstract model mechanics into concrete, perceptual cues. However, biomedical data presents two key hurdles for explainable AI (XAI). Firstly, it spans diverse modalities: static and dynamic images, multi-channel time-series, genomic sequences, and free-text—all of which must be reconciled in a single, coherent explanation. Secondly, any explanation must map onto domain concepts that matter to clinicians; generic heat-maps rarely suffice and can even mislead when they are not contextualized in terms of medical expertise or domain knowledge. In this talk, I will present some of my recent work on domain-centered XAI tools for domain experts such as researchers, doctors, and clinicians. I will also discuss some of the key takeaways from these studies, as well as promising directions of future research leveraging visualizations for biomedical XAI.
The recorded talk will be available. Recordings of previous meetups can be found at the BioVis meetup playlist on youtube
The first meetup in 2026!
BioVis COSI at ISMB 2026 - The Call for Papers for BioVis COSI at ISMB 2026 is now open; important dates are listed on the CfP page.
BioVis 2026 is an official part of ISMB 2026
