Guest post on Yet Another Mostly Male Meeting (YAMMM) - Programming for Biology

I have posted on Twitter and other places saying that I would be willing to share here anonymous postings about meetings with skewed gender ratios.  I generally am not overly fond on anonymity on the web but realize it has some very important and powerful uses, including protecting people from retribution.  So in the case of meetings with skewed gender ratios, I know from personal experience that posting about them can lead to serious vitriol, threats, and possible repercussions.  I feel confident enough in my status and position to mostly ignore these responses but I know that not everyone is so blessed.

So - here is one such anonymous post I received.
-------------------------------------------------

Last year I was looking around for good workshops to learn programming for biology
(http://programmingforbiology.org/index.html) and
about genome assembly and annotation. I came across the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
course called "Programming for Biology" and applied as they have a good reputation.
I was happy to get in and overall really enjoyed the course. I learnt how to program in
Perl (not Python what I regret a bit), a lot of background on downstream genome analysis
and had a mostly pleasant time. An interesting slogan of the meeting was
"It's not only what you learn here, but also who you meet that makes this workshop so special"
(I am paraphrasing here a bit). Great! But wait are all big players in the field of bioinformatics
guys?

Out of the 10 Guest Lectures ALL were male.

• Scott Cain             Ontario Institute for Cancer Research
• Brian Haas            Broad Institute
• Winston Hide        Harvard School of Public Health, South African National Bioinformatics Institute
• Tomas Marques     Universitat Pompeu Fabra
• Barry Moore          University of Utah
• William Pearson    University of Virginia
• James Robinson     Broad Institute
• Michael Schatz      CSHL
• Jason Stajich          University of California, Riverside
• Paul Thomas          University of Southern California

Only 2 out of the 7 instructors and tutors were female

• Simon Prochnik DOE - Joint Genome Institute, Walnut Creek, CA
• Sofia Robb         University of California, Riverside
• Steven Ahrendt University of California, Riverside
• Dave Messina Cofactor Genomics
• Shawn Rynearson University of Utah
• Deborah Triant University of Virginia
• Ken Youens-Clark University of Arizona

This means only 2 out of 17 teachers were actual women. This together with the fact that
the meeting was also sold as 'who you meet here is important' was the most disappointing
fact. There are so many talented and great female bioinformatics out there it would be
great to see at least some of them present at this workshop in 2015.

P.S.: Don't get me wrong Simon and Sofia are great and organize a lovely meeting. So this
goes under the category 'even when it hurts'.

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.

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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.

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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

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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%)

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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%)

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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%)

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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%)

Calling attention to poor speaker gender ratio - even when it hurts

So I saw this Tweet earlier today

Will be an excellent symposium! Register here @UCPlantBreeding http://t.co/Nd86UAr3hJ

— Gena Hoffman (@GenaEHoffman) March 24, 2015

And that sounded very interesting. So I clicked on the link to check out the Plant Breeding for Food Security: The Global Impact of Plant Genetics in Rice Production A symposium honoring Dr. Gurdev Khush symposium.  And, then I went to the program.  And sadly I saw something there that was not to my liking.  The speakers were almost all male (men labelled in yellow, women in green)

• Welcome to the Khush Symposium (Alan Bennett)
• The Plant Breeding Center (Charles Brummer)
• The Confucius Institute (Glenn Young)
• Global food production – challenges and opportunities (Ken Cassman) Food production, technology and climate (David Lobell)
• Panel – Impact of Gurdev Khush on plant genetics and food security Tomato genetics
• (Dani Zamir)
• (Pam Ronald)
•  (Gary Toenniessen)
•  (Gurdev Khush)
• Lunch; The California Rice Industry (Kent McKenzie)
• The rice theory of culture (Thomas Talhelm)
• Recent advances in rice productivity and the future (David MacKill)
• Hybrid rice technology contributions to global food security (Sant Virmani)
• Super green rice (Qifa Zhang)
• Tackling the wheat yield barrier (Matthew Reynolds)
• African Orphan Crops – inspiration and execution (Howard Shapiro/Allen Van Deynze)

If this was a symposium outside UC Davis the first thing I would do would be to post about it.  To Twitter or my blog or both.  And to critique them.  Why?  Because there is a bad history in STEM fields of having meetings and conferences have under-representation of women as speakers.  And this has become a passion of mine and I write about it a lot.  But I hesitated.  Why?  Because this was from UC Davis and many of the people involved are friends / colleagues.  I did not want to anger them, or embarrass them.  And I don't think there is any intentional bias here by any means.  But, if I am going to critique people outside UC Davis, it seems like I should also apply the same standards to people inside UC Davis and to colleagues and friends.

So I posted to Twitter a response:

@GenaEHoffman @UCPlantBreeding sadly the gender ratio of speakers is pretty disappointing - looks like about 14:1 M:F #STEMWomen
— Jonathan Eisen (@phylogenomics) March 25, 2015

But that did not seem sufficient.  So I wrote up this post.  Underrepresentation of women as speakers is a serious issue in STEM fields.  And it is solvable (e.g., see Some suggestions for having diverse speakers at meetings by myself and the wonderful Ten Simple Rules to Achieve Conference Speaker Gender Balance by Jennifer Martin).

Now - do I know who the possible speakers were for this symposium?  No - I don't really know the field.  Is it possible that there just are no women in the field?  Sure.  But I would bet anything that is not the case here.  Having a meeting where the ratio of speakers is 16:1 male: female sets a bad example.  UC Davis and the organizers of this meeting can do better.  And though this will possibly hurt me in various ways (I already got grief from one person who I will not name for the Tweet), I think it is critical that we call out examples such as this.

And finally I note - I have taken on the issue of women at STEM conferences and meetings because, well, it is easy to identify cases where the numbers are anomalous and it is relatively easy to solve.  But it is also important that we consider other aspects of diversity of speakers (age, ethnicity, career stage, etc).  It is important to have diversity of speakers at meetings for many many reasons.  Speaking is a career building opportunity.  Speakers serve as role models for others.  Diverse points of view are important to have represented.  Bias - whether simplicity or explicit damages the whole practice of science.  And more.  Yes, we need to work on many aspects of diversity in STEM fields.  Improving the diversity of speakers at meetings is but one part of this.  But it is an important part and it is relatively easy to do.  So just do it.  And call attention to it.  Even if it hurts.



UPDATE 3/25 11:29 AM

The meeting organizers have responded on Twitter

@phylogenomics @GenderAvenger Hey Jonathan, we were writing a response & 140 characters didn't cover it. #STEMWomen pic.twitter.com/rmGkSJTUBc
— PlantBreedingCenter (@UCPlantBreeding) March 25, 2015

Storify of some responses here

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.

Some suggestions for having diverse speakers at meetings

Been having a lot of discussions online in response to my post (Apparently, the National Academy of Sciences thinks only one sex is qualified to talk about alternatives to sex #YAMMM) tracking the awful gender ratio for speakers and session chairs at meetings run by the National Academy of Sciences in their Sackler series.  Some people were asking what one can do to improve gender diversity at meetings so I thought I would post this which I was meaning to do anyway ...

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I wrote this in an email to a meeting organizer after I had turned down their invitation due to the imbalance in gender of the speakers (more about this another time --- this is not the same case as the one I wrote about here: Turning down an endowed lectureship because their gender ratio is too skewed towards males #WomenInSTEM). 

Anyway, my colleague wrote a long and very helpful email to me after I withdrew from the meeting when I saw the speaker list.  In the email she detailed things that her organization was trying to do to increase diversity of speakers at meetings.  She ended it with this:

Thus, I take your comment to heart and wanted you to know that I care about this issues as well.  I would love to hear how you balance these inequities at your meetings and learn as much as I can.  Thank you for taking the time to bring this up I know how busy you are and appreciate your candor. Truly looking forward to more scientific exchanges and perhaps some education around gender issues.

And I wrote back, quickly, without digging into the literature or all the posts in the world about this some quick suggestions which I think others might find useful. So here is my response - again - was not meant to cover all the things one can do - just examples:

Thanks so much for the response and I am really glad to see all you are trying to do in this area. 

In terms of how we try to balance inequities at meetings I organize I would note a few simple things

1. Do not try to invite only the famous people or the people doing the "top" work.  This usually biases one towards more established researchers (as in, older) and this alas also usually is accompanied by distortion of diversity.
2. DO try to invite people across the breadth of career stages.  Meetings to me should not be only about getting the PIs whose labs are doing the best work to talk.  It should also be about giving opportunities to junior researchers - PhD students, post docs and junior faculty who are doing exciting work - perhaps more focused or smaller scale - but nevertheless exciting.  If one opens up a invited speaker list to people at diverse career stages one generally greatly increases the gender and ethnic diversity. 
3. DO try to invite people from diverse institutions - research universities, research institutes, companies, non profits, NGOs, the press, non research universities, and more.
4. DO try to be flexible about times and dates for talks - I have found that women more than men have other commitments (e.g. kids) for which they cannot change dates of activities. 
5. DO try to provide child care assistance (as you are doing).
6. DO try to make sure women are on the organizing committee See http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/01/the-easiest-possible-way-to-increase-female-speakers-at-conferences/282858/
7. DO make sure to provide travel funds.
8. DO try to include some talks on related areas that may not be the main theme of the conference.  For example history of science and ELSI related topics increase the pool of women and speakers with diverse backgrounds which can be invited.
9. DO ask the women who turn down invitations if they care to say why.
10. DO commit to spending a decent amount of time searching for qualified female speakers.  Sometimes there are people who fit ALL the goals of a meeting and they are just missed because women on average have lower public profiles than men doing the same type of work.

Just some ideas off the top of my head.

Jonathan

see also 

http://www.stemwomen.net/jonathan-eisen/ 

and 

http://phylogenomics.blogspot.com/p/posts-on-women-in-science.html