Abstract

Real-time, Online Conferencing for Biologists

BioMOO, a Multiple-user Object-Oriented environment, is the first 'virtual meeting place' for biologists. By connecting to it from any computer with Internet access, scientists can communicate with their peers and collaborate in real time. The software provides an intuitive virtual environment with both text-based and multimedia interfaces, suitable for all levels of connectivity.
Using BioMOO, seminars on diverse subjects have been held with participants from all over the world; none of them had to travel abroad for participating. Moreover, highly successful graduate-level courses on the Principles of Protein Structure and BioComputing - Sequence Analysis have been held. These courses are organised by the Virtual School of Natural Sciences (a leading school of the Globewide Network Academy), in collaboration with real institutions like Birkbeck College, Bielefeld University and the Weizmann Institute of Science.

BioMOO members have at their disposition a wide range of commands, enabling them to:

• interact with other users,
• explore the virtual environment,
• customise their surroundings, and
• create descriptive models of their work.

• fast prototyping of algorithms,
• demonstration purposes,
• tutorials for education, and
• full service to the evolving scientific community.

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