Time to boycott Oxford Global meetings due to blatant sexism

I don't even know what to say or do about this it is so stunningly pathetic.  I saw this Tweet earlier in the day:

Oxford Global’s Pharmaceutical IT Congress: All 38 speakers male! (it seems)
http://t.co/ctu18mKLAw
@phylogenomics @GenderAvenger #YAMMM

— Elisabeth Bik (@MicrobiomDigest) May 13, 2015

I figured even in an era of blatant sexism in science, this must be a mistake right?  How could there be a conference with 38 male speakers and 0 female speakers.  So I went to the site: Who is Speaking – Oxford Global's 13th Pharmaceutical IT Congress, September 2015.  And, well, as far as I can tell Elisabeth Bik has the numbers right.  (See a list at the end of this post).  They even have a running slideshow of the speakers faces.

This is even worse than the 25:1 ratio of the qBio meeting I lost it over a few years ago.  I have never seen anything like this. I note - a 38:0 ratio is nearly impossible by chance in any field and I think pretty clearly an indication of massive bias of some kind.

I note - this is not the first case of a mostly male meeting from Oxford Global.  See for example:
Oxford Global Sequencing Meetings: Where MEN Tell You About Sequencing #YAMMM

I think it is time to just boycott meetings meetings from Oxford Global.  The only way they will change is if people stop speaking at or going to their meetings.  So please - stop going to their meetings.  Stop speaking at their meetings.

Speakers 2015:

• Sebastien Lefebvre 
  Director Data Engineering and Technology – Global Data Office, Biogen Idec
• Uwe Barlage
  EDC Project Leader, Bayer Healthcare
• Marc Berger
  Vice President, Real World Data and Analytics, Pfizer
• Michael Braxenthaler
  Pharma Research and Early Development Informatics, Global Head Strategic Alliances, Roche, & President, Pistoia Alliance
• Arnaub Chatterjee
  Associate Director - Data Science, Insights and Partnerships, Merck
• James Connelly
  Global Head, Research Data Management, Sanofi
• Jos Echelpoels
  Director IT, Regional Initiatives, Janssen
• Brian Ellerman
  ‎Head of Technology Scouting and Information Science Innovation, Sanofi
• Peter Elsig Raun
  Director & Head Business Analysis, Lundbeck
• Dimitrios Georgiopoulos
  Chief Scientific Officer UK, Novartis
• Charles Gerrits
  Vice President, Innovative Patient-Centric Endpoints and Solutions, Sanofi
• Yike Guo
  Professor of Computing Science, Imperial College London and Chief Technology Officer, tranSMART Foundation
• Sergio H. Rotstein
  Director, Research Business Technology, Pfizer
• Juergen Hammer
  Global Head Data Science, Center Head Pharma Research and Early Development Informatics, Roche
• Jan Hauss
  Head Central Analytics Informatics, Merck
• Athula Herath
  Statistical Director, Translational Sciences, MedImmune
• Nigel Hughes
  Director Integrative Healthcare Informatics, Janssen Research and Development
• Michael Hvalsøe Brinkløv
  BI Architect, IT Platforms & Infrastructure, Lundbeck
• Robert J. Boland
  Senior Manager, Translational Informatics & External Innovation R&D IT, Janssen
• Adrian Jones
  Associate Director, Business Intelligence Systems, Astellas
• Srivatsan Krishnan
  Director and Head of R&D Operations and IT, Bristol-Myers Squibb
• Philippe Marc
  Global Head of Preclinical Informatics, Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research
• Dermot McCaul
  Director, Preclinical Development and Biologics IT, Merck
• Pantaleo Nacci
  Head Statistical Safety & Epidemiology/PV, Novartis Vaccine and Diagnostics Srl (a GSK company)
• Gerhard Noelken
  Global Business IT Lead for Pharmaceutical Science, Pfizer WRD
• Emmanuel Pham
  VP Biométrie, Ipsen 
• Andrew Porter
  Director, Enterprise Architecture, Merck
• Gabriele Ricci
  Vice President of TechOpps IT, Shire
• Anthony Rowe
  Director, Translational Informatics and External Innovation, Johnson & Johnson
• Martin Ryzl
  Director, GIC Analytics Platform Engineering, Merck
• Wolfgang Seemann
  Senior Project Manager, Bayer Business Services
• Aziz Sheikh
  Professor of Primary Care Research & Development and Co-Director Center for Population Health Sciences, The University of Edinburgh
• Yan Song
  Associate Director, Bioanalysis Operations, AbbVie
• Devry Spreitzer
  Director, Global Electronic Systems Quality Assurance, Astellas
• Jason Swift
  Head R&D Information UK, AstraZeneca
• Kevin Teburi
  Director – iMed Team Leader, R&D Information, AstraZeneca
• Simon Thornber
  Director, Data Analytics, Informatics and Innovation, GlaxoSmithKline
• Tjeerd Van Staa
  Professor of Health eResearch, University of Manchester

Some past meetings from Oxford Global to consider

http://www.bmsystems.net/download/BioMarkers-BMsystems-conferenceprogramme.pdf

https://web.archive.org/web/20120514151415/http://www.ngsasia-congress.com/

Cell Symposia have a problem with gender balance of speakers

With apologies I don't have time right now to tease apart all the details on these meetings. But, yuck. Cell Symposia have a big and persistent problem with gender balance of speakers. See the Storify below:

Four simple tools to promote gender balance at conferences - guest post from Julie Pfeiffer @jkpfeiff

Guest post from Julie Pfeiffer.

Julie Pfeiffer
Associate Professor of Microbiology
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
https://twitter.com/jkpfeiff
http://www4.utsouthwestern.edu/pfeifferlab/Index/Home.html

---

Four simple tools to promote gender balance at conferences 

1. Know that you are biased. Identify your biases.

We all have biases and many of them are unconscious. You can discover your own biases using online social attitude tests developed by Project Implicit, a non-profit organization affiliated with Harvard University. The Gender-Science Implicit Association Test is particularly relevant here. It turns out that I have moderate bias linking science with males, as well as other biases. Knowing this fact has been extremely important. It is very difficult to alter unconscious bias, but it is easy to understand that you are biased and edit your actions accordingly. For example, if I need to make a list of potential speakers or authors quickly, the list will be of senior men from the United States. The key is to spend time EDITING the list to ensure diversity.

2. Keep track of numbers.

Most individuals in leadership positions are not seeking to exclude women or other groups from plenary talks, career opportunities, etc. Instead, they simply forget to count. They forget to keep track of gender ratio and other types of diversity. They forget to edit. When leaders/organizers have diversity in mind, diversity is relatively easy to achieve. Two examples illustrate this point:

1) Vincent Racaniello is President of the American Society for Virology and his goal was to put together an outstanding and diverse group of plenary speakers for the annual meeting in 2015. He asked for speaker suggestions via emails and Twitter (https://twitter.com/profvrr). He made a list and he edited it. The result? The best representation of female scientists at a conference I have ever seen--- 50% of the plenary speakers at ASV this year are female.



2) The Associate Editors at the Journal of Virology choose topics and authors for short reviews called “Gems”. The goal was to have high diversity in several areas including author gender, author career stage, author location, and topic. To keep ourselves on track to achieve this goal, we included several extra columns in our author/topic spreadsheet: Female? Non-USA location? Junior PI? This simple reminder in the spreadsheet has helped us select relatively diverse authors and topics: ~30% are female, ~30% are Assistant Professors, and ~20% are at institutions outside the United States.

3. Create lists and ask people for suggestions. 


Trying to come up with names of female scientists de novo can be a challenge. A few months ago, Carolyn Coyne, Erica Ollmann-Saphire, and Clodagh O’Shea made a list of as many female virologists as they could. Over wine, they devised a list of 70 names. We have circulated this list to many of our colleagues and tweeted a request to send missing names. The list is now at 349 and is publicly available (please tweet missing names to https://twitter.com/jkpfeiff). It is much easier to think of diverse options for speakers and authors by using a pre-existing list. Virologists with this list can no longer claim that they “couldn’t think of a female speaker”. Each field could benefit from a list like this, which could also include other underrepresented groups. Several of these lists exist, as has been highlighted on this and other blogs.

4. Speak up and enlist the help of supportive senior faculty.

Expressing concern to conference organizers about low speaker diversity can go a long way. While it may be difficult to change the speaker list close to the conference date, mentioning the lack of diversity could change the future landscape of the conference. I have an example from my own experience: I created an international shitstorm that had a great outcome. In year three of my faculty position I was considering whether to attend a major conference, so I checked the speaker list to help make my decision. Zero of 18 plenary speakers were female. I decided not to attend. Instead, I emailed the conference organizer to express my disappointment with the complete lack of female plenary speakers. His response, over several emails, was less than supportive:

“…. Finally, the gender, race, religion has never been, to my opinion, valuable ways to select presenters of scientific works. The selection of the Plenary Lectures has been made by the Organizing Committee, that comprises a woman, based on the topic, then the best possible speaker on the topic…. I am aware of the current debate in our societies about "minimum numbers". I do not think they would help the cause of women in science.”

While this organizer was not supportive or responsive to my speaker suggestions, five senior (famous) faculty members in the field were hyper-supportive. Upon hearing this story, they each contacted the organizer and expressed their concern about the lack of diversity. It was too late to change the program for the conference that year. However, in every subsequent year, the plenary speakers at this conference have included women and other underrepresented groups. So, it’s possible that a simple email from a young scientist can make a difference, particularly with the help of senior faculty.

Calling attention to meetings with skewed speaker gender ratios, even when it hurts, part 2

A few weeks ago I gave a talk at the Future of Genomic Medicine 2015 (aka #FOGM15) meeting.  The talk seemed to go over well.  I talked right after Martin Blaser in a session on "The Microbiome".  I posted my slides and then a video of my talk as well as notes from the meeting: see My microbiome talk at #FOGM15 - the perils (and fun I guess) of redoing one's talk at the last minute.  And I met some really interesting people at the meeting and enjoyed most of the talks I went to.

But alas, one thing stuck in my head from this meeting.  One single Tweet from someone out there threw me for a loop:

Hey @phylogenomics, 77% of talks at #FOGM15 given by male speakers #justsayin
— Mick Watson (@BioMickWatson) March 6, 2015

And this let to a bit of soul searching on my part.  Some of the conversations on Twitter are captured in this Storify:

Which I guess culminated in a post to the organizers of the meeting

Dear #FOGM15 organizers - next time - you can (and really MUST) do MUCH better with the gender ratio of speakers
— Jonathan Eisen (@phylogenomics) March 6, 2015

Then, when I left the meeting I went to say goodbye to the organizers.  And, well, one of them did not take too kindly to the critique of the meeting, saying that they were doing a better job than other healthcare meetings.  I disagreed and said I thought they could do much better, but I had no numbers to cite at the time and the conversation ended there.

So on the way to the airport I started digging around for some numbers and I found some great resources - especially this from Rock Health.

Reading - The XX Speaker Project — XX in Health re #fogm15 http://t.co/Z5ir26g3qd
— Jonathan Eisen (@phylogenomics) March 7, 2015

And for the last few weeks I have continued to fester wondering - well - should I post more about this?  Should I dig into the gender ratio of the FOGM meetings in more detail?  Well, why do it?  Because I think it is important to know how meetings perform in terms of diversity.  Why not do it?  Well, I like Eric Topol and the other organizers.  And the meeting has many strong points.  But, as I wrote a few days ago - sometimes one needs to call attention to meeting gender ratio issues, even when it hurts.  

So then I decided to dig a little deeper and look at past versions of the "Future of Genomic Medicine".  And, well, when I did this, things just do not look so good (detailed analysis is at the end of the post). (Note - for the numbers i counted all presenting slots - session chairs, keynotes, welcomes, etc.  The numbers are not much different if one counts just "talks").

If one compares these meetings to the ones catalogued by Rock Health, the FOGM meetings are at the low end.  Not the worst certainly.  But definitely not something to be proud of.  And certainly something that could be improved upon enormously.  So I repeat the Tweet I posted during the meeting, and I stand by it, even if it means I am unlikely to be invited back and even if it means pissing off some big shots in the world of genomics ...

Dear #FOGM15 organizers - next time - you can (and really MUST) do MUCH better with the gender ratio of speakers
— Jonathan Eisen (@phylogenomics) March 6, 2015

If you are running a meeting, please consider the ways in which bias may creep into the speaker and session chair slots.  If speakers come from invitations, perhaps the invitation list is biased.  Perhaps certain types of people are more likely to say no to invitations.  Perhaps the timing of the meeting (e.g., on weekend) may lead certain types of people to not be able to participate.  Perhaps the meeting does not provide enough travel funds or child care or the right kind of schedule.  There are so many things that can lead to bias - from explicit bias against certain groups to very subtle implicit biases.  Consider inviting people from diverse career stages, which can open up speaking slots to more women and underrepresented minorities.  Consider providing child care.  Consider asking people why they say no to invitations to try and understand what is going on if many people say no.  Consider asking for help in finding speakers covering the diversity in the field.

If you do all these things, and the meeting still does not have diverse speakers, well, try some other things.  Keep trying to figure it out.  There are resources out there that can help.  Read things like Some suggestions for having diverse speakers at meetings (by me) and Ten Simple Rules to Achieve Conference Speaker Gender Balance (by Jenny Martin) and Increasing Diversity at Your Conference by Ashe Dryden (which is just completely awesome) and How To Create A More Diverse Tech Conference ... and Would I attend my own conference? - O'Reilly Radar by Sarah Milstein.

Why is this important?  Well, speaking at a meeting is important for people's careers.  It helps in merit and promotion and tenure cases.  It helps get their work recognized and known.  Speaking at a meeting is also good practice for speaking at other meetings.  Having diverse speakers also is important in terms of providing role models to attendees.  And having diverse speakers helps a meeting not just be about the same old, white, men talking about their ideas.  Or, in other words, it makes a meeting more, well, diverse.  And almost certainly more interesting.  And so on.  Diversity of speakers at meetings is important for 100s of reasons.  And don't just focus on one aspect of diversity.  I post a lot about women speakers because, well, it is easy to make a reasonable guess as to whether a person is male or female.  But there are MANY other aspects of diversity to consider (see Increasing Diversity at Your Conference by Ashe Dryden (which I referenced above and which really is awesome).

Anyway - if you are organizing a meeting, make sure to think about these issues.  And do something about them.  And if you are invited to a meeting, look at the speaker list (if it is available) and consider saying no to speaking if the meeting has diversity issues (see a post of mine about doing this here: Turning down an endowed lectureship because their gender ratio is too skewed towards males #WomenInSTEM).

And if you are considering attending a meeting, consider diversity of speakers when deciding whether or not to attend.  Meetings with high diversity of speakers should be supported.  Meetings with poor diversity relative to possible candidate speakers (e.g., who is in the field) should be avoided, shunned, and called out.  We need to force change upon some fields and the only way will be to call out the bad apples.  Mind you, it is not possible to know WHY a meeting has a skew in terms of diversity of speakers.  Thus one additional thing to consider is whether something is a consistent pattern.  For example see my post about meetings from the National Academy of Sciences Sackler Colloquia - Apparently, the National Academy of Sciences thinks only one sex is qualified to talk about alternatives to sex #YAMMM. Sadly it seems to me that the FOGM meetings have a consistent pattern of poor representation of women among the presenters.  Unless the organizers commit to changing this, I think people should not attend this meeting in the future.

---

Detailed analyses of these meetings are below.

People I have identified as males are labelled in yellow.  People I have identified as females are in green.  I realize that this is an imperfect thing to do.  I may make mistakes in my inferences.  And dividing people into two categories is not representative of the true diversity in the human population.  But I still think this is a useful, informative thing to try to do.

---

2015 FOGM (schedule is from the one sent around to participants on 3/4/15)

• Welcome
• Eric Topol
• Pateint #1 - Eunice Lee and Nilesh Dharajiya
• Francis Collins
• Session 1
• Moderator Ali Torkamani
• Diana Bianchi
• Evan Muse
• Stephen Quake
• David Hoon
• Session 2
• Moderator Ali Torkamani
• Mark McCarthy
• Christopher Austin
• George Yancopoulos
• Session 3
• Moderators Nathan Wineinger and Andrew Su
• Atul Butte
• Eric Schadt
• Andrew Su
• Joe Pickrell
• Welcome Day 2
• Patient #2
• Eric Topol
• Session 4: 
• Moderator Ali Torkamani
• Cristian Tomasetti
• Nazneen Rahman
• Roni Ziegler
• Session 5
• Moderators Kristin Baldwin and Fyodor Urnov
• J. Keith Joung
• Fyodor Urnov
• TBD
• Kristin Baldwin
• Session 5
• Moderator Kristian Andersen
• Martin Blaser
• Jonathan Eisen
• Stephen Steinhubl
• Session 6
• Moderator David Goldstein  (he did not show up)
• Elizabeth Worthey
• Ali Torkamani
• Seth Mnookin
• Virginia Hughes

All speaker and session chair slots

• Male: 30 (81%)
• Female: 7 (19%)

Just speakers

• Male: 23
• Female: 6

---

2014 - Future of Genomic Medicine VII -  schedule from here

• Welcome
• Chris Van Gorder, FACHE
• Eric J. Topol, MD
• Patient / Family #1
• Session 1
• Frank McCormick
• Bert Vogelstein
• Elaine Mardis
• Robert Nussbaum
• Sarah Jane Dawson
• Michael Pellini
• Session 2
• J. Craig Venter
• Eric Topol 
• Al Gore
• Heidi Rehm
• Muin Khoury
• Session 3
• Moderator Katrina Kelner
• Leonid Kruglyak
• Carl Zimmer
• Magdalena Skipper
• Chris Gunter
• Session 4
• Patient / Family #2
• Athur Beaudet
• Jay Shendure
• Howard Jacob
• Hakon Hakonarson
• David Epstein
• Nir Birzalai
• Ali Torkamani
• Jeffrey Hammerbacher
• Session 5
• Michael Specter
• Jessica Richman
• Andrew Feinberg
• Russ Altman
• Anne Wojcicki
• Harry Greenspun
• Zubin Damania

Speakers

• Male: 25 (76%)
• Female: 8 (24%)

---

2013 - Future of Genomic Medicine VI - schedule from here

• Welcome: Eric Topol
• Patient / Family #1
• Session 1:
• Michael Snyder
• William Gahl
• Howard Jacob
• Ali Torkamani
• Gholson Lyon
• Cinnamon Bloss
• Misha Angrist
• Session 2
• Evan Eichler
• Eric Schadt
• Katrina Armstrong
• George Weinstock
• Session 3
• Joe Ecker
• Stephen Kingsmore
• Stephen Quake
• Session 4
• Patient / Family #2
• Siddhartha Mukherjee
• Elaine Mardis
• Daniel D. Von Hoff
• Randy Scott
• Susan Desmond Hellman
• Elias Zerhouni
• Janet Woodcock
• Session 5
• Peter Vesscher
• David Goldstein
• George Church
• Jonathan Eisen
• Atul Butte
• AJ Jacobs
• Neil Risch
• Lonny Reisman
• Daniel MacArthur

Speakers

• Male: 26 (84%)
• Female: 5 (16%)

---

2012 Future of Genomic Medicine V - schedule from here

• Welcome
• Chris Van Gorder, FACHE
• Eric J. Topol, MD
• Joseph Beery and Family
• Moderators: Samuel Levy, PhD and Eric J. Topol, MD
• Samuel Levy, PhD
• Matthew J. Price, MD
• Julie Johnson, PharmD
• Michael R. Hayden MB, ChB, PhD
• William E. Evans, PharmD
• Moderators: Evan Eichler, PhD and Sarah Murray,
• Evan Eichler, PhD
• Christofer Toumazou, PhD
• Siddharta Mukherjee, MD, PhD
• Sarah Murray, PhD
• Moderators Nicholas Schork, PhD and Bradley Patay, MD
• Hakon Hakonarson, MD, PhD
• Isaac Kohane , MD, PhD
• John A. Todd, FRS, PhD
• Moderators Eric J. Topol, MD and Nicholas Schork, PhD
• Howard J. Jacob, PhD
• Joseph G. Gleeson, MD
• Stanley F. Nelson, MD
• Lynn Jorde, PhD (note - originalled labelled as female - corrected thanks to comment from Bruce Rannala)
• Eric J. Topol, MD
• Moderators: Aravinda Chakravarti, PhD and Richard Klausner, 
• Aravinda Chakravarti, PhD
• Joseph Nadeau, PhD
• Nicholas Schork, PhD
• Hakon Hakonarson MD, PhD
• Moderator Eric Topol
• Matthew Herper
• Daniel B. Vorhaus, JD, MA
• Issam Zineh, PharmD, MPH
• Moderators: Elaine Mardis, PhD and Jeffrey Trent, PhD
• Richard D. Klausner, MD
• Thomas J. Hudson, MD
• Jeffrey M. Trent, PhD
• Daniel D. Von Hoff, MD
• Elaine R. Mardis, PhD
• Moderators: Samuel Levy, PhD and Fred Gage, PhD
• Fred H. Gage, PhD
• Bruce D. Gelb, MD
• Joseph C. Wu, MD, PhD

All speaker and session chair slots

• Male: 44 (88%)  45 (90 %)
• Female: 6 (12%) 5 (10 %)

Just speakers

• Male: 31 32 (91.4%)
• Female: 4  3 (8.6%)

---

2011 Future of Genomic Medicine IV - schedule from here

• Session 1: Moderators: Sarah S. Murray, PhD and Eric J. Topol, MD
• Hannah A. Valantine, MD
• Geoff Ginsburg, MD, PhD
• Steve Shak, MD
• Cinnamon S. Bloss, PhD
• Matthew J. Price, MD
• Session 2: Moderators: Bradley Patay, MD and Nicholas J. Schork, PhD
• Kevin Davies, PhD
• Thomas Goetz, MPh
• Melanie Swan, MBA
• Session 3: Moderators: Samuel Levy, PhD and Nicholas J. Schork, PhD
• Kári Stefánsson, MD
• Aravinda Chakravarti, PhD
• Howard J. Jacob, PhD
• Sarah S. Murray, PhD
• James R. Lupski, MD, PhD
• Nicholas J. Schork, PhD
• Stephen L. Hauser, MD
• David R. Bentley, D.Phil, F.Med.Sci.
• Keynote: Juan Enriquez, BA, MBA
• Session 4: Moderators: Robert L. Strausberg, PhD and Samuel Levy, PhD
• Robert L. Strausberg, PhD
• Elaine R. Mardis, PhD
• Thomas J. Kipps, MD, PhD
• Samuel Levy, PhD
• Daniel D. Von Hoff, MD
• Dennis A. Carson, MD
• Session 5: Moderators: Eric J. Topol, MD and Bradley Patay, MD
• Eric J. Topol, MD
• Amy Harmon
• Misha Angrist, PhD
• Session 6: Moderators: Sarah S. Murray, PhD and Samuel Levy, PhD
• Hakon Hakonarson, MD, PhD
• Mark McCarthy, MD, F.Med.Sci.
• Karen Mohlke, PhD
• Stephen S. Rich, PhD
• Philippe Froguel, MD, PhD
• Muredach P. Reilly, MB, MS

All speaker and session chair slots

• Male: 35 (80%)
• Female: 9 (20%)

Today's all male genomics meeting brought to you by Oxford Nanopores

The Tweets about this really say it all so I am just going to embed them here:

Disappointed that 9/9 speakers lined up for @nanopore’s MinION conference are men http://t.co/UJ8gSy32Rn #YAMMM cc @phylogenomics @hollybik

— Karen James (@kejames) February 25, 2015

@kejames Was it renamed ManIon conference? @nanopore @phylogenomics @hollybik

— Claudia Taake (@ct_la) February 25, 2015

@kejames @nanopore @phylogenomics @hollybik However, close to 100% of the attendees are woman, according to picture 1.

— Nicolas Robine (@notSoJunkDNA) February 25, 2015

@notSoJunkDNA Yeah, I noticed that. Odd choice, considering. @nanopore @phylogenomics @hollybik

— Karen James (@kejames) February 25, 2015

Really disappointed in Oxford Nanopores.  Perhaps we can get some of the speakers to cancel on them unless they fix things.

• Ron Ammar, University of Toronto, Canada
• Ewan Birney, European Bioinformatics Institute, UK
• Thomas Hoenen, NIH/NIAID, USA
• Nick Loman, University of Birmingham, UK
• Brook Milligan, New Mexico State University, USA
• Justin O’Grady, University of East Anglia, UK
• Jared Simpson, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Canada
• Yutaka Suzuki, University of Tokyo, Japan
• Mick Watson, The Roslin Institute, University of Edinburgh, UK

Update 3/8/15 

Well, after I posted about the Nanopore meeting there were some responses on Twitter. So I made a Storify

So I decided to check the meeting today to see whether they "fixed" anything.

Right now they list 11 male and two female speakers.  So that added two males and two females.  Better ratio.  Still pretty bad.  They really could do better ...

Oxford Global Sequencing Meetings: Where MEN Tell You About Sequencing #YAMMM

Well, got an email invite to one of these Oxford Global Meetings. Sadly the gender ratio of listed speakers is awful. I highlighted the list below (men in yellow, women in green).  Ratio of 17:3.  (See below).  No thanks Oxford Global.

Dear Professor Jonathan Eisen ,
 We hope you are well and we would like to invite you to speak at our forthcoming Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) USA congress (www.nextgenerationsequencingusa-congress.com) or co-located  Single Cell Analysis USA congress (www.singlecellusa-congress.com) to be held on 27th -28th October 2015 at Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA.
 Over the two days, the NGS USA congress aims to cover updates and application of NGS technologies in genomics and genetics research in the US and UK, Europe. Topics are comprised of NGS & NGS Data Analysis Technologies and Platforms, NGS for Cancer Drug Development, Microbiology and Immunotherapy as well as Clinical Applications & Diagnostics. Novel updates in Gene Synthesis, Protein Sequencing and Targeted Sequencing will also be explored The Single Cell Analysis USA congress looks at new methods in DNA sequencing, epigenomic DNA sequencing and RNA sequencing, informatics, data handling as well as application of single cell genomics in understanding cancer  other areas of cancer research such as cancer stem cells and immunotherapy. The presentations are also comprised of novel techniques in imaging and cytometry, isolation and processing of single cells. The congress also covers the applications in translational medicine and the clinic for therapeutic targeting.
 The combination of carefully researched topics and high-level networking opportunities creates a unique discussion platform for over 250 senior scientists we are expecting in attendance from research institutions and pharmaceutical companies. Confirmed Speakers for 2015 include:NGS·          Sreekumar Kodangattil, Senior Principal Scientist, Pfizer       
·          Shrikant M. Mane, Senior Research Scientist in Genetics; Director, MBB Keck Biotech laboratory; Director, Yale Center for Genome Analysis
·          Stephan Schuster, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Penn State University
·          Richard  McCombie, Professor, Human Genetics, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
·          Jingyue  Ju, Director, Center for Genome Technology and Biomolecular Engineering, Professor of Chemical Engineering and Pharmacology, Columbia University            
·          Christopher Mason, Chair, ABRF NGS Consortium, Assistant Professor, Weill Cornell Medical College. Dept. of Physiology & Biophysics; The Brain & Mind Research Institute
·          Michaela Bowden, Associate Director, Center for Molecular Oncologic Pathology, Dana Farber Cancer Institute      
·          Yuan Gao, Director, Associate Professor, Lieber Institute/Johns Hopkins University
·          Sheng Li, Instructor in Bioinformatics, Department of Neurological Surgery, Weill Cornell Medical College
·          Michael  Fraser, Associate Director, CPC-GENE Prostate Cancer Genomics Program, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre    
 Single Cell·          Daniel Chiu, Professor, University of Washington    
·          Steve Potter, Professor, Division of Developmental Biology, Cincinnati Children's Medical Center
·          Norman Dovichi, Professor, University Notre Dame 
·          Zaida Luthey-Schulten, Professor of Chemistry, University of Illinois
·          Paul Bohn, Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Notre Dame       
·          Navin Varadarajan, Assistant Professor, University of Houston
·          Alexander R., Ivanov, Director of the HSPH Proteomics Resource, Research Scientist
Harvard School of Public Health·          Viktor Adalsteinsson, Researcher, Researcher, Koch Institute at MIT, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard Medical School
·          Xinghua Victor Pan, Research Scientist, Single Cell Genomics Group, Sherman Weissman Laboratory, Department of Genetics, Yale University School of Medicine
·          Cheng-Zhong Zhang, Computational Biologist, Department of Medical Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

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.

Don't forget to positively highlight meetings w/ "good" gender ratio of presenters

As many know, I spend a decent amount of effort critiquing conferences that have poor speaker diversity (mostly focus on gender ratio).  Well I am also trying to start calling out in a positive way those meetings that do a good job with speaker diversity. And here is one: 2014 Xenopus Genetics meeting in Pacific Grove.  I was pointed to it in an email that was in response to a Tweet I posted (not sure if I have permission to say who this was from - will post if they say it is OK). (UPDATE 9/20 - it was Ian Quigley).

See meeting w/ severely bad speaker gender ratio but don't feel comfortable posting?send me details & I will post phylogenomics@me.com
— Jonathan Eisen (@phylogenomics) September 19, 2014

From what I compute - the ratio was 30:22 male: female.  I do not know what the ratio of the "pool" of speakers is but regardless, having 42% female speakers is a more even ratio than I have seen for most life sciences meetings.  So they deserve some props for this.

Female speakers highlighted in yellow.  Male in green.  

Keynote Lecture: Rebecca Heald

Special Lectures from John Gurdon and Marc Kirschner

Invited Speakers

Enrique Amaya, University of Manchester

Ruchi Bajpai, University of Southern California



Bill Bement, University of Wisconsin

Mike Blower, Harvard Medical School

Cliff Brangwynne, Princeton University

Josh Brickman, The Danish Stem Cell Center DanStem

Ken Cho, University of California, Irvine

Hollis Cline, The Scripps Research Institute

Frank Conlon, University of North Carolina

Lance Davidson, University of Pittsburgh

Eddy DeRobertis, University of California, Los Angeles

Amanda Dickinson, Virginia Commonwealth University

Carmen Domingo, San Francisco State University

Karel Dorey, University of Manchester

Jim Ferrell, Stanford University

Jenny Gallop, University of Cambridge

Jay Gatlin, University of Wyoming

Jean Gautier, Columbia University

Xi He, Harvard University

Ralf Hofmann, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

Jubin Kashef, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

Mustafa Khokha, Yale University

Mary Lou King, University of Miami

Laurent Kodjabachian, Developmental Biology Institute of Marseille (IBDM)

Branko Lantic, Cardiff University

Dan Levy, University of Wyoming

Soeren Lienkamp, University of Freiburg

Karen Liu, King’s College

Laura Ann Lowery, Boston College

Ann Miller, University of Michigan

Brian Mitchell, Northwestern University

Anne-Helene Monsoro-Burq, Institute Curie

Kim Mowry, Brown University

Shuyi Nie, University of Georgia

Christof Niehrs, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ)

Nancy Papolopulu, University of Manchester

Sabine Petry, Princeton University

Susannah Rankin, Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation

Bruno Reversade, Institute of Medical Biology, A* Singapore

Dan Rokhsar, University of California, Berkeley

Hazel Sive, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Elena Silva Casey, Georgetown University

Francesca Spagnoli, Max-Delbrück-Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC)

Elly Tanaka, Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden

Gert Veenstra, Radboud University Nijmegen

Monica Vetter, University of Utah

Sara Woolner, University of Manchester

Phil Zegerman, University of Cambridge

Aaron Zorn, Cincinatti Children’s

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

Well, I saw this Tweet the other day

Another for @phylogenomics's list of YAMMMs (Yet Another Mostly Male Mtg). Ratio = 1F speaker to 23M speakers. http://t.co/qgEfwtBS2B
— Hopi Hoekstra (@hopihoekstra) September 16, 2014

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.  

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See meeting w/ severely bad speaker gender ratio but don't feel comfortable posting?send me details & I will post phylogenomics@me.com
— Jonathan Eisen (@phylogenomics) September 19, 2014