yammgm – Jonathan Eisen's Lab

Another "Yet another mostly male meeting (YAMMM)" from BGI

Well just saw an announcement for this meeting on Twitter: The First Announcement of The Tenth Annual Meeting of the International Conference on Genomics (ICG

And I hoped beyond hope that they would have a decent representation of women speakers at the meeting. Why did I hope this? Well, in the past, BGI run meetings have had incredibly skewed gender ratios of speakers. See this post for a discussion of their past record: Kudos to the DOE-JGI for organizing a genomics meeting w/ a good gender ratio – no kudos to BGI – yet again

I guess I had hoped that perhaps they would try to change their practices after I and other people criticized them for their past record. So – I went to the web site for the ICG10 meeting advertised in the Tweet. Oh well, silly me for hoping.

On the front page they have 14 speakers they are promoting – all of them male.

Screen shot from ICG10 web site

On the announcement page they have a slightly different list where the ratio is 14:1

Jef Boeke, NYU Langone University School of Medicine, USA
Sydney Brenner, 2002 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, Singapore
Charles Cantor, Sequenom, Inc., USA
Julio Celis, Danish Cancer Society Research Center, Denmark
Richard Durbin, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, UK
Leroy Hood, Institute for Systems Biology, USA
Thomas Hudson, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Canada
Maria Leptin, Chair of EMBO, Germany
Maynard Olson, University of Washington, USA
Aristides Patrinos, J. Craig Venter Institute, USA
Mu-ming Poo, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Richard Roberts, New England Biolabs, 1993 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, USA
Eils Roland, Heidelberg University, Germany
Mathias Uhlen, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Tilhuan Yilma, University of California, Davis, USA

Regardless, this is a consistent pattern of not having an even remotely balanced ratio of male to female speakers at their meetings. And please, avoid their meetings until they change this.

YAMMGM – yet another mostly male genomics meeting (series): Plant Genomic Congresses by Global Engage

Just got invited to the “Plant Genomics Congress Asia” meeting. As usual, the first thing I look at now is gender ratio. From their web site I got a list of their speakers (so far) and their advisory board. I highlighted in Yellow ones I am inferring are male and in green ones I am inferring are female. For the meeting the ratio so far is 17:4 male to female. Not the worst I have seen but still pretty bad. Though if you look at their advisory board at least the ratio for the speakers is better — it is 17:0 for the Advisory Board.

John Manners, Chief, CSIRO Plant Industry, Australia
Dave Edwards, Principal Research Fellow, School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, University of Queensland, Australia
Nagendra Singh National Professor-BP Pal Chair, National Research Centre on Plant Biotechnology, Indian Council of Agricultural Research, India
Han Zhao, Professor of Biology and Biotechnology, Institute of Biotechnology Jiangsu, Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China
Huaan Yang, Department of Agriculture and Food (DAFWA), Australia
Rajeev K. Varshney, Principal Scientist (Applied Genomics) & Director, Centre of Excellence in Genomics, ICRISAT, India
Apichart Vanavichit, Professor, The Rice Gene Discovery Unit, Kasetsart University, Thailand
Norman Warthmann, Senior Post Doc, Borevitz Laboratory, ANU College of Medicine, Biology and Environment, Australian National University, Australia
Chungui Lu Lecturer in Post-Genomics, Faculty of Science, Nottingham University, UK
Beng Kah (Bk) Song, Lecturer, Monash University, Sunway Campus, Australia/ Malaysia
Kenneth Olsen, Associate Professor Department of Biology, Washington St Louis University, USA
Yue-Ie Hsing, Distinguished Research Fellow, Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology, Academica Sinica, Taiwan
Meilina Ong Abdullah, Breeding and Tissue Culture Unit, The Advanced Biotechnology and Breeding Centre, Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) Malaysia
Yijun Ruan, Professor and Director, Systems Biology Center, HuaZhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China
Sachiko Isobe, Head Applied Plant Genomics, Kaduza DNA Research Institute (KDRI), Japan
Yuan-Ming Zhang, Professor of Statistical Genomics, State Key Lab. of Crop Genetics and Germplasm Enhancement, Nanjing Agricultural University, China
Parveen Chhuneja, Geneticist, Bioinformatics Centre School of Agricultural Biotechnology, Punjab Agricultural University, India
Shengyi Liu, Professor and Head, The Key Lab of Oil Crops Biology, the Ministry of Agriculture, PRC Department of Genomics, Oil Crops Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China
Wen-Hsiung Li, Director and Distinguished Research Fellow, Biodiversity Research Center, Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology, Academica Sinica, Taiwan
Graham King, Director, Southern Cross Plant Science Professor of Plant Genomics and Epigenetics, Southern Cross University, Australia
Ryan Lister, Professor/ARC Future Fellow, Plant Energy Biology ARC CoE, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, The University of Western Australia
Amitabh Mohanty, Lead Trait Discovery, E.I. DuPont India Pvt Ltd.

Advisory Board:

Robin G Allaby, Associate Professor, School of Life Sciences, University of Warwick, UK
Todd Blevins, Senior Postdoctoral Associate, Pikaard Lab, Indiana University
Roger Bossé, Global Product Line Leader, PerkinElmer
James Coomer, Senior Technical Advisor for Europe. Data Direct Networks
Tamas Dalmay, Professor of RNA Biology, School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich
Massimo Delledonne, Professor, Department of Biotechnology & Director, Functional Genomics Center, University of Verona, Italy
Joe Duran, Director – HPC Systems, Technology Solutions Division, Fujitsu
Alberto Ferrarini , Biotechnology Professional, University of Verona
Keywan Hassani-Pak, Group Leader Applied Bioinformatics, Computational and Systems Biology, Rothamsted Research
Julin Maloof, Professor, Department of Plant Biology, University of California, Davis
Piotr Mieczkowski, Director of NGS Facility, Research Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina
Stephen P. Moose, Associate Professor, Maize Genomics, Department of Crop Sciences,, Program Leader, Feedstock Genomics, Energy Biosciences Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
Lukas Mueller, Professor, Plant Breeding and Genetics, Boyce Thompson Institute, Cornell University
Odd-Arne Olsen, Professor at Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences (IPM), Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB) , Faculty of Education & Natural Sciences, Hamar University College (HUC), Norway
Chris Pires, Associate Professor Division of Biological Sciences, University of Missouri-Columbia
Uwe Scholz, Group Leader, Research Group Bioinformatics and Information Technology, IPK
Alan Schulman, MTT Agrifood Research and Institute of Biotechnology, University of Helsinki

So after checking out this meeting I decided – at their suggestion to check out the meetings in Europe and the USA they are organizing. The speakers for the US meeting are a whopping 33:4 male to female according to my count and the ratio for the European meeting is about the same (mind you I like some of the speakers – am not blaming them — but this meeting should be avoided in my opinion). Definitely not impressed with the organizers here or the Global Engage organization behind these meetings. Uggh. What is wrong with people? It is really not actually that hard to do better than this.

Another genomics meeting featuring men men men and men: International Forum on "Genomics, Innovation and economic growth"

Well this is just peachy. Saw this tweet

The International Forum on Genomics, Innovation & Economic Growth will be held on 25 – 27 Nov 2013 in Mexico City. http://t.co/0M54BLg1IU.
— Human Genome Org (@humangenomeorg) July 29, 2013

And my first thought was – please – please – please let this meeting have a decent gender ratio. I am so so sick of genome meetings that have gender ratio issues. Alas, then I went to their site: International Forum “Genomics, Innovation and economic growth”

11 plenary speakers. All of them men. See here.
Forum president: 1 man
Advisory Board: 5 men

Crap crap crap. What is WRONG WITH PEOPLE?

Nothing else to say really. But I will not be going I guess I can say that.

ICG Europe starts w/ "Omics & the future of man" & sticks to men the rest of the time

Fun. Another day. Another YAMMGM (yet another mostly male genomics meeting). This one is the International Conference on Genomics Europe 2013. I have copied the program as it is now here and then highlighted the men and women as far as I can tell. And, well, it is not very balanced. It starts off, ironically, with “Omics and the future of man” and then stays on both omics and alas, men, for most of the meeting. The first woman does not talk until 5 pm on the first day. Nothing against BGI per se. But they seem to be repeat offenders in having meetings with mostly male speakers. A difference between countries? Perhaps. But unfortunate and unpleasant nevertheless.

Sessions with speakers:

Plenary Session 1: Omics and the future of man

09:00-09:10: Opening ICG-Europe 2013 & Welcome: Hans Galjaard, Chairman of the Department of Clinical Genetics at Erasmus University
09:10-09:55: Talk 1: Huanming Yang, BGI, China
9:55-10:25: Talk 2: Jeremy Nicholsen, Head of the Department of Surgery and Cancer, Imperial College London, UK
Topic: Molecular Phenotyping and Systems Medicine Approaches in Personalised and Public Healthcare

Chairman: Prof.Huanming Yang, BGI, China

Plenary Session 2 :

11:00-11:30: Talk 1 (30 min): Jun Wang, CEO, BGI, China
11:30-12:00: Talk 2 (30 min): Karsten Kristiansen, Head of the Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
12:00-12:30: Talk 3 (30 min): Nils Brunner, Director of the Sino-Danish Breast Cancer Research Centre, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Topic: Docetaxel resistance in vitro: Known mechanisms and novel pathways in breast cancer
Chairman: Prof. Jun Wang, BGI, China

Plenary Session 3: Plant and Animal Genomics

13:30-13.55: Talk 1: Rajeev K. Varshney, Director-Centre of Excellence in Genomics, ICRISA, Hyderabad, India
Topic: “Little” is “more” for chickpea and pigeonpea
13.55-14.20: Talk 2: Michael Bevan, Genomics and Functional Genomics of Bread Wheat for Crop Improvement, John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK
Topic: Genomics and Functional Genomics of Bread Wheat for Crop Improvement
14.20-14.45: Talk 3: Michel Georges, Unit of Animal Genomics, University of Liège, Belgium
14.45-15.15: Talk 4: Tomas Marques, ICREA Research Professor, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
Topic: Great Ape genetic diversity
15.15-15.35: Talk 5: TBC
Chairman: Prof. Marc Van Montagu , VIB, Belgium

Session 4: Cancer genomics and Transcriptional Regulation

16:00-16:20: Talk 1(20 min): Stein Aerts, Heading the Laboratory of Computational Biology, K.U.Leuven, Belgium
Topic: Probing into the genome, transcriptome, and regulatory network of T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia
16:20-16:40: Talk 2(20 min): Lars Bullinger, Assistant Professor, University of Ulm, Germany
Topic: Genomics in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) – clinical translation of findings
16:40-17:00: Talk 3(20 min): Diether Lambrechts, Assistant Professor, K.U.Leuven & VIB, Belgium
Topic: Mutation signatures of mismatch repair deficiency in cancer genomes
17:00-17:20: Talk 4(20 min): Lynnette Fernandez-Cuesta, University of Cologne, Germany
Topic: Characterization of lung neuroendocrine tumors
17:20-17:40: Talk 5(20 min): Henrik Ditzel, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark
Chairman: Dr. Jan Cools (K.U.Leuven, VIB)

Workshop：Innovation-Entrepreneurship and Venture creation-1

14:30-14:50: Talk 1 (20 min): Boo Edgar, Program Director, Innovation and entrepreneurship; The Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg
14:50-15:10: Talk 2 (20 min): Martin Bonde, Chairman of Danish Biotech association
15:10-15:30: Talk 3 (20 min): Søren Møller, Managing Investment Director, Novo Seeds
Chairman: Johan Cardoen
16:00-16:20: Talk 1(20 min): Johan Cardoen, Managing Director VIB
16:20-16:40: Talk 2(20 min): Patrick Van Beneden, GIMV
16:40-17:00: Talk 3(20 min): Ann De Beuckelaer, Flanders Bio

Session 5: Human Disease- Structural Genomic Variation and Function

09:00-09:30: Talk 1 (30 min): Wigard Kloosterman, UMC Utrecht, The Netherlands
Topic: Cause and Consequence of Complex Genomic Rearrangements
09:30-10:00: Talk 2 (30 min): Michael Talkowski, Instructor, MGH, Harvard University, USA
Topic: Sequencing unique human genomes reveals novel loci in autism and predictive phenotypes in prenatal diagnostics
10:00-10:30: Talk 3 (30 min): Thierry Voet, K.U.Leuven
Chairman: Prof. Edwin Cuppen , Hubrecht Institute

Session 6: Metagenomics

09:00-09:30: Talk 1 (30 min): Hui Wang, The Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, UK
Topic: Virus discovery by using deep sequencing data
09.30-10:00: Talk 2 (30 min): TBC
10:00-10:30: Talk 3 (30 min): Bjoern Textor, New England Biolabs GmbH
Topic: Direct Selection of Microbiome DNA from Host DNA
11:00-11:30: Talk 1 (30 min): Jeroen Raes, Scientific Collaborator, VUB&VIB
11:30-12:00: Talk 2 (30 min): Rob Knight, Associate Professor, Colorado University
Topic: Characterizing microbial effects of family structure, including our furry family members?
12:00-12:30: Talk 3 (30 min): Ruth Ley, Cornell University
Topic: Host control of the microbiome
Chairman: Dr. Jeroen Raes (VUB, VIB)

Session 7(3 talks: include Q&A 5 mins): Human Disease – Clinical Genetics

11:00-11:35: Talk 1(35 min): Han Brunner, Department of Human Genetics, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, The Netherlands
Topic: Clinical Genetic Diagnostics by Genome Sequencing.
11:35-12:05: Talk 2(30 min): Wang Wei, BGI Health, Shenzhen, China
Topic: Non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT): Current clinical application and future outlook
12:05-12:45: Talk 3(30 min): Gabor Vajta, BGI Europe, Copenhagen, Denmark and Central Queensland University, Rockhampton, Australia in concert with Du Yutao, BGI Health, Shenzhen, China
Topic: Pre-implantation Diagnostics by Blastocyst Biopsy, Vitrification and Genome Sequencing
Chairman: Prof. Lars Bolund, Aarhus University

Session 8: Health and Translational Medicine-1

13:30-13:55: Talk 1(25 min): Vince Gao, BGI
Topic: Development of Clinical Service at BGI Health
13.55-14:20: Talk 2(25 min): Attila Lorincz, UK
Topic: Clinical Validation of Genomic and Epigenomic Biomarker Panels
14:20-14:45: Talk 3(25 min): Maurizio Ferrari, Director of Clinical Molecular Biology and Cytogenetics Laboratory, and Head of Genomic Unit for the Diagnosis of Human Pathologies, Center for Translational Genomics and Bioinformatics, IRCCS San Raffaele, Milan, Italian
Topic: From bench to bedside: new advanced molecular techniques for genetic diagnosis
14:45-15:10: Talk 4(25 min): Carlos Simón Vallés, Board Certified and Full Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Valencia,Spain
Topic: Clinical Application of the endometrial receptivity array
15:10-15:35: Talk 5(20 min): To be selected from submitted abstracts
Chairman: Dr. Vince Gao , BGI

Session 9: Human disease

13:30-13:55: Talk 1(25 min): Lars Bolund, Professor of Clinical Genetics at Aarhus University, Denmark, and Adjunct Professor of Human Genetics at Copenhagen University, Denmark
Topic: Chronic Disorders, Rare Genetic Variants and Pig Models of Degenerative Disease Processes
13:55-14:20: Talk 2(25 min): Tao Dong, Head of anti-viral T cell immunology group, MRC Human Immunology Unit, Oxford University, UK
14:20-14:45: Talk 3(25 min): Hartmut Wekerle, Honorary Professor, Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Martinsried, Germany
14:45-15:10: Talk 4(20 min): Ramneek Gupta, The Technical University of Denmark, Danmark
15:10-15:30: Talk 5(20 min): Anders Børglum, Professor, Aarhus University, Denmark
Chairman: TBC

Session 10: Health and Translational Medicine-2

16:00-16:20: Talk 1(20 min): Diana M Eccles, Academic Vice President of the Clinical Genetics Society, Southampton General Hospital, UK
16:20-16:40: Talk 2(20 min): E. Gomez Garcia, Maastricht University, the Netherlands
16:40-17:00: Talk 3(20 min): Pascal Pujol , Chu Montpellier, France
17:00-17:20: Talk 4(20 min): Atocha Romero, Hospital Clinico San Carlos, Spain
17:20-17:40: Talk 5(20 min): Ian Campbell, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Australia
Topic: Identification and validation of familial cancer susceptibility genes using massively parallel sequencing
Chairman: Prof. Yves-Jean Bignon, Centre Jean Perrin

Workshop: Ethical, Legal and Social Implications (ELSI)

16:00-16:20: Talk 1(20 min): Lone Frank, Denmark
16:20-16:40: Talk 2(20 min): Pascal Borry, K.U.Leuven, Belgium
16:40-17:00: Talk 3(20 min): TBC
Chairman: Prof. Huanming Yang, BGI

Session 11: Biobanks

08:00-08:30: Talk 1 (30 min): Zhang Yong, BGI, China
08:30-09:00: Talk 2 (30 min): Kristian Hveem, Chief Scientific Officer, Nord-Trondelag County, Norway
09:00-09:30: Talk 3 (30 min): Shaoliang Peng, National University of Defense Technology, China
Topic: Bioinformatics and Computational Biology on TianHe Supercomputer
Chairman: Dr. Zhang Yong, BGI

Workshop: Use of Omics Technology for Personalized Medicine

08:00-08:30: Talk 1 (30 min): Jenny Wei, R&D Information China, AstraZeneca global R&D
Topic: Genomics for Personalized Medicine: From Discovery to Clinic
08:30-09:00:Talk 2 (30 min):André Rosenthal, CEO, Signature Diagnostics AG
Topic: Next-Gen Sequencing Tests for Prognosis and Prediction of Response to Therapy of Patients with Colorectal Cancer Using Somatic Mutation Signatures
09:00-09:30: Talk 3 (30 min):Radoje Drmanac, Complete Genomics, Inc. Mountain View, California, U.S.A.
Topic: Accurate whole genome sequencing as the ultimate genetic test enabling personalized disease prevention and treatment
Chairman: TBC

Session 12: Bioinformatics

10:00-10:30: Talk 1 (30 min): Nathaniel Street, Assistant professor, Umea University
Topic: Sequencing the Norway spruce genome reveals a unique history of repeat expansion
10:30-11:00: Talk 2 (30 min): Sofie Van Landeghem, Ghent University, VIB, Belgium
Topic: Mining the literature to enhance integrative network biology
11:00-11:30: Talk 3 (30 min): Mario Caccamo, Acting Director at The Genome Analysis Centre, Norwich, UK
Topic: Next Generation Genomics for Complex Crops
Chairman: Prof. Yves Van De Peer (U.Ghent, VIB)

For related posts see

YAMMGM: Yet another mostly male genomics meeting #2: Beyond the Genome 2013

Well, the “winner” of this months YAMMGM award is Beyond the Genome 2013 | Mission Bay | San Francisco

Alas, YAMMGM stands for “Yet another mostly male genomics meeting” so it is not an award to covet.

This meetings listed speakers are below with women highlighted in green.

Nicholas Navin -The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Sunney Xie – Harvard
Xu Xun – BGI
James Hicks -CSHL
Fuchou Tang – Peking
Itai Yanai – Israel
Thierry Voet – Sanger
Jacob Kitzman – Plasma cell free DNA sequencing
Stephen Quake – Stanford and Fluidigm
Mario Caccamo – Genome Analysis Centre
Rob Martienssen – CSHL
Ryan Lister – University of Westerm Australia
Neelima Sinha – UC davis
Jorge Dubcovsky – UC Davis
Robert Schmitz (Salk) – 1001 Arabidopsis project and CHiP-Seq
Marja Timmermans (CSHL)
Magnus Nordborg
Chairs Alicia Oshlack, Yingrui Li and Michael Schatz to chair the bioinformatics challenge.
James Taylor – Emory and Galaxy
Chris Dagdigian – Bioteam
David Haussler -UC Santa Cruz
Janet Kelso – Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

That comes to 16.6% if you count all listed. If you exclude session chairs the numbers are a little different but still pretty low.

Certainly this does not prove any bias on the part of the meeting organizers. But it certainly suggests to me they might want to think about why the ratio is skewed.

YAMMGM: Yet another mostly male genomics meeting

Just got an email from Illumina – key parts are below:

2013 Illumina Scientific Summit

Dear Jonathan,

Illumina’s third annual Scientific Summit will be held June 3rd through 7th in charming New Orleans, Louisiana, at the Loews Hotel. Described by a past attendee as, “an upscale Gordon Conference”, the Scientific Summit is an invitation-only meeting of 120 leading scientists and thought leaders plus the Illumina executive and R&D leadership teams.

Plenary sessions will be focused on the Genetic Etiology of Cancer and Genetic Diseases, The Changing Landscape of Medical Genetics, Microbial Detection, and Epigenetics. The formal presentations will be complemented by attendee-driven discussion sessions on a variety of topics ranging from workflow bottlenecks to future applications of Next Generation Sequencing in single cells and diagnostics.

The following distinguished scientists are scheduled to speak:

Dr. Mark Adams, Scientific Director, J. Craig Venter Institute

Dr. Kenneth J. Bloom, Chief Medical Officer, Clarient

Dr. David Craig, Deputy Director of Bioinformatics, Associate Professor and Director, Neurogenomics Division, Head Neurobehavioral Research Unit, TGen

Dr. Richard Gibbs, Wofford Cain Chair in Molecular and Human Genetics, Professor, Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, Professor, Programs in Translational Biology & Molecular Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine

Dr. David Goldstein, Director, Duke Medical Center for Human Genome Variation, Duke University

Dr. Steven Jones, Head of Bioinformatics and Associate Director, Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre, BC Cancer Agency

Dr. Michael Katze, Professor, Microbiology, University of Washington

Dr. Jim Knowles, Professor and Associate Chair for Research and Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences, USC

Dr. Peter Laird, Director, USC Epigenome Center, Professor of Surgery,Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Keck School of Medicine, USC

Neil Miller, Director of Informatics and Software Development, Center for Pediatric Genomic Medicine, Children’s Mercy Hospital, Kansas City

Dr. Steven Musser, Director, Office of Regulatory Science, FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition

Dr. Charles Perou, Distinguished Professor of Genetics, Professor, Pathology & Lab Medicine, Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of North Carolina School of Medicine

Dr. Jonathan Sebat, Chief, Beyster Center for Genomics of Neuropsychiatric Diseases, Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry & Cellular and Molecular Medicine, University of California, San Diego

Dr. George Weinstock, Professor of Genetics and Molecular Microbiology, Washington University

Dr. Liz Worthey, Director of Genomic Informatics, Medical College of Wisconsin

I love Illumina sequencing toys. I really do. No so impressed with the gender ratio of this meeting however. Would not have gone anyway … but if I COULD have attended I would not have. I wonder -did they even think about whether there might be some bias here? There certainly are plenty of female candidates they could have invited. Maybe they did not invite women? Maybe all the women said no?