Winter School in Mathematical and Computational Biology 2019
Women outnumber men as speakers at UQ's Winter School 2019
For the first time in 16 years, the 2019 Winter School in Mathematical and Computational Biology at UQ (1–5 July) will feature more female than male speakers.
The total number of speakers includes 21 women and 19 men.
Winter School’s main organiser, Dr Nick Hamilton of RCC, QCIF and UQ’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB), said it is the most gender-balanced Winter School there has been. “This is something we always strive towards. It’s also something attendees notice, and we have had positive comments in the past about the number of great women speakers we have,” he said.
This year’s Winter School features a range of speakers who are leaders in their field from the UK, China, Hong Kong, New Zealand and research institutes around Australia.
Female speakers include:
- Associate Professor Jessica Mar (AIBN, UQ), leader of the Mar Group, which focuses on the development of bioinformatics methods to understand how regulatory processes go awry in human diseases. Associate Professor Mar moved to UQ last year from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, USA;
- Dr Katia Nones (QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute), an expert on the interpretation of next-generation sequencing and array data for cancer research; and
- Dr Maren Westermann (Max Kelsen), a machine learning engineer.
International speakers include:
- Professor Nicholas Loman from Microbial Genomics and Bioinformatics in the Institute of Microbiology and Infection at the University of Birmingham, UK;
- Dr Jue Ruan, a Chief Scientist in the Innovation Team of Agricultural Genomics Technologies at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences’ Agricultural Genomics Institute, Shenzhen, China; and
- Associate Professor Joshua Ho from the School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Hong Kong.
Registrations are now open for the annual Winter School, and filling fast. Last year’s event sold out, so people are advised to register early. Early-bird registration closes 10 June.
The School includes an afternoon workshop on the Genomics Virtual Laboratory, which is limited to 36 bench scientists who are full Winter School registrants.
UQ’s IMB is the host and a sponsor of the Winter School. Other sponsors include Bioplatforms Australia, UQ Genomics Initiative, QCIF, Australian Genome Research Facility (AGRF), Faculty of 1000 and QFAB.
Both IMB and UQ’s Faculty of Science are providing support to their students to attend the Winter School. Contact Dr Nick Hamilton for more information: n.hamilton@imb.uq.edu.au.
The 40 speakers at this year's Winter School.