Biological and biomedical research are increasingly driven by experimental techniques that
challenge our ability to analyse process and extract meaningful knowledge from the underlying
data. The impressive capabilities of next-generation sequencing technologies together with
novel and constantly evolving distinct types of omics data technologies have created an
increasingly complex set of challenges for the growing fields of Bioinformatics and
Computational Biology. The analysis of the datasets produced and their integration call for new
algorithms and approaches from fields such as Databases Statistics Data Mining Machine
Learning Optimization Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. Clearly Biology is more
and more a science of information and requires tools from the computational sciences. In the
last few years we have seen the rise of a new generation of interdisciplinary scientists with
a strong background in the biological and computational sciences. In this context the
interaction of researchers from different scientific fields is more than ever of foremost
importance in boosting the research efforts in the field and contributing to the education of a
new generation of Bioinformatics scientists. The PACBB'17 conference was intended to contribute
to this effort and promote this fruitful interaction with a technical program that included 39
papers spanning many different sub-fields in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. Further
the conference promoted the interaction of scientists from diverse research groups and with a
distinct background (computer scientists mathematicians biologists).
