The workshops will be held between 27 October and 13 November. The workshops are associated with the “Computational Structural Biology Relevant to South Africa – CoBRA” programme led by Dr. Özlem Taştan Bishop. The CoBRA project and workshops are funded by the National Bioinformatics Network (NBN).

Dr. Bishop says “I would like to thank NBN for its support. I also would like to thank all my collaborators and supporters, especially Prof. Fourie Joubert and the Bioinformatics students on the workshop organizing committee, Theon du Preez, Matthys Kroon and Oliver Bezuith. In future, I hope to expand my structural biology and structural bioinformatics research at the Unit and at the University of Pretoria, and also to familiarize more research groups in the country with this important topic.”

The three workshops have attracted much interest, with a total of 63 applications from 12 different institutions (University of Pretoria, University of Witwaterstrand, University of Limpopo, North West University, University of Cape Town, University of Stellenbosch, Rhodes University, Durban University of Technology, University of Kwazulu Natal, Agricultural Research Council, CSIR and MINTEK).

The workshops are:

1. PRINCIPLES OF DRUG DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT (27-29/10/2008) by Drs. Christopher J. Parkinson, Chris van der Westhuyzen, Moira Bode, Stephen C. Pelly, CSIR, South Africa.

2. STRUCTURAL BIOINFORMATICS (3-7/11/2008) by Prof. Anna Tramontano, Università di Roma "La Sapienza", Italy.

3. PRINCIPLES OF PROTEIN X-RAY CRYSTALLOGRAPHY (11-13/11/2008) by Dr. Mike Lawrence, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Australia.