In early spring of 2005, Dr. Ching T. Hou of the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research (NCAUR), ARS, USDA, Peoria, Illinois, USA and President Jei-Fu Shaw of the National Chung Hsing University (NCHU), Taichung, Taiwan decided to organize International Symposium on “Biocatalysis and Biotechnology” at NCHU. After two successful international symposia; October 2005 on “Biocatalysis and Biotechnology: Functional Foods and Industrial Products” and December 6, 2006 on “Biocatalysis and Bioenergy” at NCHU, Taichung, Taiwan, majority of the invited Symposium attendee decided to establish a society named “International Society of Biocatalysis and Biotechnology (ISBB)” and elected Ching T. Hou as President and Jei-Fu Shaw as Vice President of ISBB. In 2010, ISBB expended its scope and its Board decided to change its society name to International Society of Biocatalysis and Agricultural Biotechnology (ISBAB) (http://www.isbab.org).

ISBAB has become well-known in the world scientific community with many successful annual Symposia/Meetings in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, USA, Slovak Republic, Canada, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. After each symposium, we publish a book: 2005 “Handbook of Industrial Biocatalysis” by CRC Press; 2006 “Biocatalysis and Biotechnology for Functional Foods and Industrial Products” jointed published by AOCS Press and CRC Press; 2007 on “Biocatalysis and Bioenergy” by John Wiley & Sons; 2008 on Biocatalysis and Agricultural Biotechnology” by CRC Press, and 2009 on “Biocatalysis and Biomolecular Engineering” by John Wiley & Sons.

In 2009, ISBB Board decided to launch its official journal “Biocatalysis and Agricultural Biotechnology (BAB)” initially as “ISBB Special Issues” in New Biotechnology for a period before it has its own official journal. The first issue of “ISBB Special Issues” was published in October 2009. Since then we successfully published eight ISBB Special Issues in New Biotechnology. With this success, the new official journal BAB was launched in January 2012 with Elsevier as publisher.

The new journal BAB is devoted to all areas of biocatalysis and agricultural biotechnology in which biological systems are developed and/or used for the provision of commercial goods or services. Biocatalysis defined here include enzyme catalysis, biotransformation, bioconversion, fermentation, genetic engineering and product recovery. The journal will publish peer-reviewed basic and applied research papers in the form of either full paper or short communication, authoritative reviews, and feature articles. The scope of the journal will encompass the research, industrial and commercial aspects of biotechnology, including the areas of: biocatalysis; bioprocesses; foods; agricultural biotechnology; genetic engineering; molecular biology; analytical biotechnology; chemical biotechnology; plant biotechnology; microbial biotechnology; environmental biotechnology; systems biology; protein technologies and commercial enzymes; tissue and cell engineering; healthcare and pharmaceuticals; biomedical; biofuels; genomics; nanotechnology; environment and biodiversity; and bioremediation.

In 2010, ISBAB Board approved to elect ISBAB Fellows to honor their scientific achievements and also established “World Academy of Biocatalysis and Agricultural Biotechnology” (WABAB) to accommodate ISBAB Fellows. The first ISBAB Fellows (WABAB members) were elected in May 2011.

The 15th ISBAB Symposium/Meeting was held at Hiroshima, Japan on September 19-21, 2019, and the 16th ISBAB Symposium/Meeting will be held at NCHU, Taichung, Taiwan on October 19-22, 2020.