Tag: YAMMM

A distasteful & disgraceful "Are there limits to evolution?" meeting at the University of Cambridge #YAMMM

Well, I saw this Tweet the other day

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js And though there was a bit of a discussion on Twitter I felt I had to follow up with a blog post. When I saw the post I was at a conference (Lake Arrowhead Microbial Genomes) where I could get Twitter access but for some reason very little web access. So I could not dig around until now (I am home). 

This meeting is a complete disgrace and an embarassment for the field of evolutionary biology, for the University of Cambridge which is hosting the meeting, and for the Templeton Foundation which is sponsoring it.

Why do I say this? Well, pretty simple actually. The meeting site lists the Invited Keynote speakers for the meeting.  Notice anything?  How about I help you by bringing all the pictures together.

Notice anything now?  How about I help you some more by masking out the men and not the women.

Impressive no?  25 speakers – 23 of them male.  I guess that means there are no qualified female speakers who coudl discuss something about evolution right?  It would be worth reading “Fewer invited talks bu women in evolutionary biology symposia” to get some context.  What an incredible, disgusting, distasteful and disgraceful meeting.  
I recommend to everyone who was considering going to this meeting – skip it.  Also consider writing to the University of Cambirdge and the Templeton Foundation to express your thoughts about the meeting.  This certainly is a fine example of Yet Another Mostly Male Meeting (YAMMM).  Well, maybe I should word that differently – this is a disgusting example of a YAMMM.  

For more on this and related issues

  • Posts on Women in STEM


    • Also see

    //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    ——–
    This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
    of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
    at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

    ——–

    International Symposium on Subsurface Microbiology – where men tell us about deep things

    Just saw this Tweet:

    //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js This refers to this meeting: Call for Abstracts for 2014 Ninth International Symposium on Subsurface Microbiology, Pacific Grove California

    The plenary speakers for this meeting are all men

    • Peter Girguis
    • Terry Hazen
    • Rainer Meckenstock
    • Lars Nielsen
    • Aaron Packman
    • Karsten Pedersen
    • Timothy Scheibe
    • Jack Schijven

    The last meeting was in 2011 and it was not much better – with one female keynote speaker.

    • Andreas Kappler
    • Karsten Pedersen
    • Christian Griebler
    • Ian Head
    • Frank Löffler
    • Babara Sherwood-Lollar
    • Bo Barker Jørgensen
    • Ken Takai
    • Kai-Uwe Hinrichs
    • Tori Hoehler

    Apparently, only men can talk about deep things.  Fun times.

    ——–
    This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
    of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
    at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

    ——–

    The Agricultural Bioscience International Conference #ABIC2014 run by @ABICFoundation: where you can hear lots of talks by men #YAMMM

    Well, here is this week’s YAMMM (yet another mostly male meeting) alert: The Agricultural Bioscience International Conference in Saskatchewan.

    Male Speakers: 40
    Female speakers 4

    1. Marc Albertsen
    2. Robert Carberry
    3. David Fischhoff
    4. Maurice Moloney
    5. Frédéric Seppey
    6. Juliana Alexandre
    7. Tom Carrato
    8. Michael Frodyma
    9. Carlo Montemagno
    10. Tim Sharbel
    11. Simon Barber
    12. David Chalack
    13. Richard Gray
    14. Giuseppe Natale
    15. Roman Szumski
    16. Roger Beachy
    17. Raju Datla
    18. Wayne Hunter
    19. Matthew O’Mara
    20. Albert Vandenberg
    21. Suzanne Bertrand
    22. Swapan Datta
    23. David Irvin
    24. Peter Phillips
    25. Victor Villalobos
    26. Julie Borlaug
    27. Maurice Delage
    28. Lawrence Kent
    29. Ingo Potrykus
    30. Simon Warner
    31. Jim Brandle
    32. David Dent
    33. Ganesh Kishore
    34. Andrew Potter
    35. Howard Wheater
    36. John Buchanan
    37. Claude Fauquet
    38. Robert Lamb
    39. Thomas Redick
    40. Hong-Wei Xue
    41. Derek Byerlee
    42. Nina Fedoroff
    43. Greg Meredith
    44. Andrew Reed

    Who gets the credit/blame for this wonderful arrangment? 
    1. Chair, Wilf Keller, Ag-WestBio Inc.
    2. Jerome Konecsni, Innovation Saskatchewan
    3. Muriel Adams, ABIC Foundation
    4. Art Froehlich, Ad Farm
    5. Pierre Fobert, National Research Council
    6. Graham Scoles, University of Saskatchewan
    7. Peter Phillips, Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy
    8. Paul McCaughey, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
    9. Dr.Abdul Jalil, Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture (originally colored green)
    10. Janice Tranberg, Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture
    This goes with another YAMMM from Canada recently: Today’s YAMMM (Yet Another Mostly Male Meeting) Brought to You by CIFAR & NAS.  I have not done any analysis of meetings organized by country but I am thinking it might be worth looking into.  I would really suggest if anyone is considering going to this meeting for you to skip it.  There should be consequences for such a skewed ratio.  And while you are at it consider writing to the organizers and sponsors.  I will …
    ——–
    This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
    of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
    at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

    ——–

    No Ovaries? Well this Ovarian Club Conference is For You (YAMMMs for everyone)

    Well, I just got an email invitation to attend CME – OVARIAN CLUB 4.  And alas, rather than just dumping it into SPAM (which I did do) I clicked on one of the links.  I had to know – what was the gender balance at this meeting.  Was there any chance that the organizers would see that it would be ironic to not have a decent number of female speakers?  Alas, nope.

    The organizing committee is 17:1 males to females.

    And the speaker balance is not much better something like 25:6.

    I guess maybe they should rename this “Meeting brought to you by people who mostly do not have ovaries.”  Sad.  Another YAMMM (Yet another mostly male meeting).

    Related posts and pages

    ——–
    This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
    of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
    at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

    ——–

    Today’s YAMMM (Yet another mostly male meeting): pharma-nutrition #PN2015

    Just got pointed to (by Elisabeth Bik) an announcement for a meeting: Home : Pharma-Nutrition 2015 with a focus on “Linking the Microbiome with Nutrition and Pharma”.  And alas, the list of confirmed speakers is as follows:

    • Keynote Speaker
      • Martin J. Blaser, NY University Medical Center, New York, NY, USA
    • Speakers
      • Gregor Reid, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada 
      • Alain van Gool, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands 
      • David Hafler, Yale, New Haven, CT, USA 
      • John F. Cryan, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland 
      • André Marette, Laval University, Montreal, QC, Canada 
      • Charles R. Mackay, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia
      • Alan L. Landay, Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, IL, USA

    Yay.  All men.  How wonderful.  Because, you know, there are no women working on the microbiome and nutrition right?  Ugg.

    Seems like they are still working on getting more speakers.  I will send this blog post to the organizers and see what they say.  But suffice it to say I am very disappointed in them.  Oh, and shockingly, the two organizers are men: Johan Garssen and Alan Landay.

    These YAMMMs (Yet Another Mostly Male Meeting) really have got to be killed.  People should not got to them.  People should not speak at them.  And the organizers should not be allowed to run other meetings unless they can explain themselves and provide evidence that they will work to not have this happen again.

    UPDATE A FEW MINUTES AFTER POSTING.

    I found the program committee for the meeting.  Alas the gender ratio there is lame too.

    • John F Cryan, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland
    • Alain van Gool, Radboud University Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
    • David Hafler, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA
    • Charles R Mackay, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
    • André Marette, Laval University, Sainte-Foy, QC, Canada
    • Gregor Reid, Lawson Health Research Institute, London, ON, Canada

    And a bit strangely – all of the people on the program committee are speakers.  No bias there.

    ——–
    This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
    of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
    at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

    ——–

    Today’s YAMMM (Yet Another Mostly Male Meeting) Brought to You by CIFAR & NAS

    Well, just got an invite to this meeting: Symbioses becoming permanent: The origins and evolutionary trajectories of organelles.  The topic seems of direct interest to what I work on.  And, it is relatively close (Irvine is a short hop away).  So this could be a way to go to a meeting without having to travel too far.  And maybe I could see my younger brother Matt who lives in LA and just graduated from UC Irvine’s Masters program in Sound Engineering. Then I looked at the schedule of speakers and organizers.  Many are friends.  Many others are colleagues.  Could be fun to see some people I have not seen in a while.  And then I realized, most – no nearly all of them – are men.  Below I list the people involved in the meeting, highlighting men in yellow and women in blue.

    Organizers: W. Ford Doolittle, Patrick Keeling, and John McCutcheon

    Distinctive Voices Public Lecture presented by Michael Gray, CIFAR Advisor, Dalhousie University

    Session 1: Genomes (evolutionary rates, oddities, and reduction)

    • Introduction and welcome remarks – W. Ford Doolittle, CIFAR Advisor & Patrick Keeling, CIFAR Program Director and Senior Fellow
    • John McCutcheon, CIFAR Associate Fellow, University of Montana
    • John Archibald, CIFAR Senior Fellow, Dalhousie University, Nuclear organelles 
    • Andrew Roger, CIFAR Senior Fellow, Dalhousie University, Organelle reduction 
    • Siv Andersson, Uppsala University, Alphaproteobacterial genome evolution 
    • David Smith, University of Western Ontario, Roots of genomic architecture variation 
    • Daniel Sloan, Colorado State University, Cytonuclear co-evolution under extreme mitochondrial mutation rates
    • John Allen, University College London, Why keep genomes?

    Session 2: Integration/Control (trafficking, signaling, transporters)

    • Debash Bhattacharya, Rutgers University, Transporters in organellogenesis 
    • Nancy Moran, University of Texas, Austin, Insect endosymbionts 
    • Geoff McFadden, University of Melbourne, Diversity of protein trafficking
    • Chris Howe, Cambridge University, Why integrate?
    • Steve Perlman, CIFAR Fellow, University of Victoria, Maternal transmission, sex ratio distortion, and mitochondria 
    • William Martin, Düsseldorf University, Endosymbiont and organelle, what’s the difference? 
    • Moriya Okhuma, Riken University, Metabolic integration across endosymbiotic communities

    Session 3: Theories and Models

    • Eors Szathmary, Loránd University, A fresh look at cooperation in some major transitions, especially the origin of eukaryotes
    • Marc Ereshefsky, University of Calgary, Evolutionary individuality
    • Peter Godfrey-Smith, City University of New York, Individuality and the egalitarian transitions 
    • Maureen O’Malley, University of Sydney, Philosophical Reflections on Endosymbiosis: Implications for Evolutionary Theory
    • Toby Kiers, University Amsterdam, Bacterial cooperativity

    Closing remarks J. McCutcheon

    So – that appears to be a ratio of 18 male speakers and 4 female speakers for a whopping 18% female speakers.  No thanks CIFAR and NAS.  I will sign up for a different meeting.  And by the way – WTF?  There are so so many qualified women working on these topics – what let to this 18:4 ratio?  The organizers should really rethink their processes and the sponsors should pull funding from meetings like this.  It is the only way some people will pay attention to diversity.

    UPDATE: 8/20

    Wrote to the NAS via their Website

    To whom it may concern:

    I am writing to express my disappointment in the gender ratio of speakers at this meeting (18 males, 4 females).  Due to the skew I am unwilling to participate.  See http://phylogenomics.blogspot.com/2014/08/todays-yammm-yet-another-mostly-male.html for details.

    Sincerely,

    Jonathan Eisen

    Got this response

    Dear Dr. Eisen,

    The NAS Committee on Scientific Programs, which oversees the Sackler Colloquia most definitely considers gender diversity when approving these programs.  When organizers propose the programs they achieve a good balance on paper. Regrettably, in many fields, women scientists are at a premium and are sometimes overwhelmed with invitations and demands for their participation on programs and committees.  For a variety of reasons, including availability of speakers, the final program is not always as optimally balanced as originally intended.

    I have conveyed your message to NAS Vice President and Chair of the Committee on Scientific Programs and will also share your concerns with the colloquium organizers and co-sponsor.

    Best regards,

    Susan Marty
    Program Director
    National Academy of Sciences
    Sackler Colloquia
    http://www.nasonline.org/programs/sackler-colloquia/

    So I wrote back

    Susan 

    Thank you very much for the response.  It is good to hear there is some emphasis on gender diversity when programs and developed.  However, in my experience and based on my readings of the literature on this topic, this is not usually sufficient to produce diverse conferences.  Do you know if the NAS has any additional policies relating to diversity at conferences.  For example, if someone does not accept an invitation, is the organizer of the meeting then free to select whomever they like or are there protocols to help guarantee that the selection of replacements is also diverse?  Also do you know if there are any policies relating to the meetings themselves such as child care that have been shown to impact the attendance of women more than men?   

    Any additional information you have would be appreciated.  I think that NAS could and should do more than just review the proposed list of invitees. 

    Sincerely
    Jonathan Eisen 

    ——–
    This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
    of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
    at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

    ——–

    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

    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.

    ——–
    This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
    of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
    at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

    ——–

    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
    ——–
    This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
    of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
    at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

    ——–

    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.

    ——–
    This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
    of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
    at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

    ——–

    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?

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    This is from the “Tree of Life Blog”
    of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate
    at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter.

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