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.

1. John Manners, Chief, CSIRO Plant Industry, Australia 
2. Dave Edwards, Principal Research Fellow, School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, University of Queensland, Australia 
3. Nagendra Singh National Professor-BP Pal Chair, National Research Centre on Plant Biotechnology, Indian Council of Agricultural Research, India 
4. Han Zhao, Professor of Biology and Biotechnology, Institute of Biotechnology Jiangsu, Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China 
5. Huaan Yang, Department of Agriculture and Food (DAFWA), Australia 
6. Rajeev K. Varshney, Principal Scientist (Applied Genomics) & Director, Centre of Excellence in Genomics, ICRISAT, India 
7. Apichart Vanavichit, Professor, The Rice Gene Discovery Unit, Kasetsart University, Thailand 
8. Norman Warthmann, Senior Post Doc, Borevitz Laboratory, ANU College of Medicine, Biology and Environment, Australian National University, Australia 
9. Chungui Lu Lecturer in Post-Genomics, Faculty of Science, Nottingham University, UK 
10. Beng Kah (Bk) Song, Lecturer, Monash University, Sunway Campus, Australia/ Malaysia 
11. Kenneth Olsen, Associate Professor Department of Biology, Washington St Louis University, USA 
12. Yue-Ie Hsing, Distinguished Research Fellow, Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology, Academica Sinica, Taiwan 
13. Meilina Ong Abdullah, Breeding and Tissue Culture Unit, The Advanced Biotechnology and Breeding Centre, Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) Malaysia 
14. Yijun Ruan, Professor and Director, Systems Biology Center, HuaZhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China 
15. Sachiko Isobe, Head Applied Plant Genomics, Kaduza DNA Research Institute (KDRI), Japan 
16. Yuan-Ming Zhang, Professor of Statistical Genomics, State Key Lab. of Crop Genetics and Germplasm Enhancement, Nanjing Agricultural University, China 
17. Parveen Chhuneja, Geneticist, Bioinformatics Centre School of Agricultural Biotechnology, Punjab Agricultural University, India 
18. 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 
19. Wen-Hsiung Li, Director and Distinguished Research Fellow, Biodiversity Research Center, Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology, Academica Sinica, Taiwan 
20. Graham King, Director, Southern Cross Plant Science Professor of Plant Genomics and Epigenetics, Southern Cross University, Australia 
21. Ryan Lister, Professor/ARC Future Fellow, Plant Energy Biology ARC CoE, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, The University of Western Australia 
22. Amitabh Mohanty, Lead Trait Discovery, E.I. DuPont India Pvt Ltd. 

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
• YAMMGM: Yet another mostly male genomics meeting
• Crosspost from PLOS Biologue: Working to increase diversity of PLOS Biology Academic Editors and Advisory Board members
• Lake Arrowhead Microbial Genomes Meeting 2012 Speaker Gender Ratio #LAMG12
• Q-Bio conference in Hawaii, bring your surfboard & your Y chromosome b/c they don't take a XX
• Winner of the "genome conference speakers should be male" award ...
• "Genomics: the Power and the Promise" meeting - could be called "Men Studying Genomics" instead
• Diversity (of speakers, participants) at meetings: do something about it

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?