The society elects ISCB Fellows annually, to honor members that have distinguished themselves through outstanding contributions to the fields of computational biology and bioinformatics.

[8][9] The ISCB was legally incorporated in early 1997,[9] with Lawrence Hunter elected as its inaugural president by the members of the founding board of directors, which included Russ Altman, Philip Bourne, David States and Alfonso Valencia.

chair of Stanford University's department of bioengineering and director of the program in biomedical informatics, and over 1,200 delegates attended ISMB 2000 in San Diego.

Although Bourne served as president for only one year, he left his mark on the society by increasing the interaction with regional groups and conference organizers worldwide, and through an improved web presence.

This phase brought many uncertainties for the society when attendance dropped to one half of budgeted expectations due to travel fears and restrictions related to outbreaks of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS, the start of the war in Iraq, and the location, which broke with the pattern of North American and European venues.

In part to reduce ISCB's dependence on ISMB proceeds to fund the society's activities and annual overhead costs, a pilot regional conference was hosted in the US to gauge interest in smaller, localized meetings.

The journal is intended to emphasize computational methods applied to living systems at all scales, from molecular biology to patient populations and ecosystems, and which offer insight for experimentalists.

A president, an executive committee, and a board of directors comprise ISCB's scientific leadership, drawing on distinguished, internationally renowned researchers who are elected for their term by the general society membership.

The executive director leads the ISCB staff and supports a diverse set of committees dedicated to specific issues that are important to the computational biology and bioinformatics community, including education, policy, and publications.

As of 2018[update], notable members of the board of directors include: Alex Bateman, Bonnie Berger, Terry Gaasterland, Janet Kelso, Thomas Lengauer, Yves Moreau, Christine Orengo, Burkhard Rost, Alfonso Valencia and Martin Vingron.

[15] An important goal of any COSI is to foster a topically-focused collaborative community wherein scientists communicate with one another on research problems and/or opportunities in specific areas of computational biology.

One of the main roles of the student council is to promote soft skills in order to develop potential in bioinformatics and computational biology trainees.