Another Mostly Male Meeting from UCSD- should be called "Food and Fuel for the 19th Century"

Well, just when I thought meeting organizers from UCSD had learned their lesson regarding mostly male meetings - this comes along.  Check out "Food and Fuel for the 21st Century" (I was pointed to this by a comment on a blog post of mine). The speakers are

• Eric Allen, Ph.D.
• Shota Atsumi, Ph.D.
• Roger Beachy, Ph.D.
• Bianca Brahamsha, Ph.D.
• Geoffrey Chang, Ph.D.
• Joseph Ecker, Ph.D.
• James W. Golden, Ph.D.
• Farzad Haerizadeh, Ph.D.
• Jeff Hasty, Ph.D.
• Sara Iverson, M.S.
• Martin Jonikas, Ph.D.
• Stephen Mayfield, Ph.D.
• Greg Mitchell, Ph.D.
• George Oyler, M.D., Ph.D.
• Bernhard Palsson, Ph.D.
• Jason Pyle, M.D., Ph.D.
• Ben Saydah, Ph.D.
• Hamilton Smith, M.D.
• Brian Staskawicz, Ph.D.
• Martin Yanofksy, Ph.D.

That a ratio of 18:2 or 10% female.  

Not that I know the cause of this but here are some other pieces of information to consider.

The Food and Fuel for the 21st Century Program lists 5 people on their Executive Committee.  Any guesses on the # of these that are men?  Well it is 5.

• Mike Burkart
• Mark Estelle
• Mark Hildebrand
• Stephen Mayfield
• Julian Schroeder

Fortunately they have an Advisory Committee too and that must have some women on it right?  Nope.

• Josh Graff-Zivin
• George Tynan
• Byron Washom 
• Bob Schmidt, Ph.D. 
• Tim Zenk

Reminds me a bit of the QBio meeting from 2013 organized by many from UCSD which I wrote about last year: Q-Bio conference in Hawaii, bring your surfboard & your Y chromosome because they don't take a XX.  I note - this years Q-Bio meeting is much better.  But one can ask - does nobody at UCSD think about these issues when planning conferences and Advisory / Executive Committees.  I personally don't think one should choose women to just choose women.  But as with the Q-Bio meeting from last year, I think there are an enormous number of highly qualified women working on topics directly related to "Food and Fuel for the 21st Century" and thus I am both surprised and disturbed by the gender ratio of this meeting and this organization.


UPDATE 3/4 7:21 AM

It took me a bit but I found details on the 2013 symposium from the same group.  The web site for the 2013 meeting is not active as far as I can tell.  However it is available in the Internet Archive.  For example, here is a snapshot from June 1, 2013.  From that snapshot here are the listed speakers

• David Kramer, Michigan State University
• Susan Golden, University of California, San Diego
• Julian Schroeder, University of California, San Diego
• Stephen Mayfield, University of California, San Diego
• Steven Briggs, University of California, San Diego
• Matteo Pellegrini, University of California, Los Angeles
• Donald Weeks, University of Nebraska--Lincoln
• Michael Burkart, University of California, San Diego
• Chancellor Pradeep Khosla, University of California, San Diego
• Farzad Haerizadeh, Life Technologies
• Ben Hueso, California State Assembly
• Bill Gerwick, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
• Eric Mathur, SG Biofuels
• James Van Etten, University of Nebraska--Lincoln
• Fred Tennant, Heliae
• David Dunigan, University of Nebraska--Lincoln
• Xuemei Bai, Cellana
• George Oyler, University of Nebraska--Lincoln
• Gerry Mackie, University of California, San Diego
• Mark Hildebrand, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
• Lawrence Johnson, Salim Group
• Craig Behnke, Sapphire Energy
• Rebecca White, Sapphire Energy

For a ratio of 20:3.