Dear Colleagues

Here is a brief report on the progress of APBioNet
since our meetings in January 1998.

1. APBioNet Summit in January 1998 Maui Hawaii
----------------------------------------------
This series of meetings at the PSB'98 Maui led to a
consensus among several countries present to form the
nascent APBioNet comprising country/economy representatives
from USA, Canada, China, HongKong,
Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, and others.


2. APBioNet Web site mirroring
------------------------------
Dr Tim Littlejohn (AU) is organising the formation of the
APBionet website and the mirror locations throughout
the AP region. Professor Lynn Ten Eyck (USA) has kindly 
made some checks as to the official name of APBioNet.
Several countries have submitted bids to host the
mirror sites.
>> ACTION: Tim to feedback on the progress.

3. APBioNet Bioinformatics Survey for APEC
------------------------------------------
Dr Tan Tin Wee (SG) will be giving this report at the
APEC TEL Working Group meeting in Brunei in the middle of
March 1998. We hope to be able to table a proposal for
funding APBioNet Network Connections Programme, and/or
APBioNet Bioinformatics Training Programme at the same
APEC Tel meeting.  A number of APBioNet founding members
have volunteered to help in crafting these proposals.
>> ACTION: APBioNet volunteers to come up with the proposal.

4. APBioNet-BIC joint BioMolecular Structural Analysis Workshop
---------------------------------------------------------------

http://bic.nus.edu.sg/workshop/bmsa.html
This first APBioNet activity will be organised in conjunction
with the Bioinformatics Centre, National University of Singapore.
We hope that more countries will offer jointly organised seminars
and that this will be the first of many to come to be held under
the auspices of APBioNet.
Please note that some degree of subsidy will be made available
for special participants of this workshop.
The event will be held at the Clinical Research Centre Auditorium
National University of Singapore from 25 to 28 March 1998.
>>> ACTION: Please INFORM potential participants in your midst

5. APAN Bioinformatics Working Group 2-3 March 1998
------------------------------------

A number of members of the APBioNet will be attending the
Bioinformatics Working Group (Kim, KR; Suhaimi MY; Tan SG) of the Asia
Pacific Advanced Network (APAN) consortium meetings at
Tsukuba, Japan (2-3 Mar 98). Please see http://www.apan.net
and http://apan.or.kr/meetings/tsukuba98/
or http://www.apan.net/meetings/tsukuba98/
I would like to propose that APBioNet be officially
recognised as the collaborator of APAN in the user
communities represented by APBioNet, ie in the bioinformatics,
biocomputing and computational biology area.

If this is agreeable to all APBioNet founders,
I will make official representation on behalf of APBioNet
to the APAN Board, of which I am a member, and as the
CoChair of the APAN Applications Working Group.
>>> YOUR FEEDBACK AND DECISION IS NEEDED

In addition, registration to APAN is still open. If you
like to turn up, please feel free to register at 
http://apan.net/meetings/tsukuba98/register.html


6. APNG User Community Working Groups
-------------------------------------

As chairman of APNG, (http://www.apng.org), I have
tabled a proposal to create User Community Working
Groups within the incubator umbrella of APNG, the
Asia Pacific Networking Group which has spawned out
APNIC (www.apnic.net), APIA (www.apia.org), APPLe
and fostered APAN (www.apan.net).  

If APBioNet members are agreeable, I will explore the 
possibility of APBioNet's affiliation and/or cooperation 
with APNG and raise it up to APNG's Executive Committee 
members in the near future, possibly coopted as one of the
major User Community Working Groups of APNG?
>>> YOUR FEEDBACK AND DECISION IS NEEDED

7. Conclusion
-------------
APBioNet has made a good headstart. We need to organise
ourselves better in the near future. A number of outstanding
items need to be resolved, eg Website and coooperation with
other AP organisations, etc. I hope that founding members
will be able to find time to feedback on the above items,
as well as to activity initiate projects and workshops etc.
Please feel free to send me more information for the next
report.

Best Regards

Tin Wee
--
Dr Tan Tin Wee
APBioNet

Director, Bioinformatics Centre NUS
Chairman, APNG
etc etc.