• Solidify the exchange of ideas and initiate scientific cooperations between bioinformaticians and virologists
• Develop specific bioinformatical tools to be applied in virology
• Facilitate interactions between between industry and academia
• Implement third-party funded collaborative joint-funded projects on bioinformatics and virology that achieve more than the sum of their parts
• Increase the international visibility of virus bioinformatics
• Promote young scientists and advance teaching of virus bioinformatics.
• Organise training courses in virus bioinformatics.

Viruses are the cause of a considerable burden to human and animal health. In the last years we have witnessed both the emergence of new viral diseases and the re-emergence of known diseases in new geographical areas. The power of new genome sequencing technologies, associated with new tools to handle “big data”, provide unprecedented opportunities to address fundamental questions in virology. Virologists have an urgent need of virus-specific bioinformatical tools.