Dear Veronica You are absolutely right and this was an error on my part. I am aware of subconscious bias, and obviously need to do more to correct this! I can assure you the conference committee has put gender balance at the heart of speaker selection; and I have in fact championed it during our discussions, as have others. We expect a good gender balance in the final agenda. As you say there are already many good female speakers, and we expect many more. Please accept my apologies for this error. Mick From: VAN HEYNINGEN Veronica Sent: 26 July 2016 09:19 To: OVERDUIN Bert <Bert.Overduin@ed.ac.uk> Cc: edinburgh_bioinformatics@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk; nextgenbug-archive@googlegroups.com; ashworthall@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk; icmb@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk; wcb@lists.ed.ac.uk; scrm-bio@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk; btostaff@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk; sbs-admin@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk; igmm-users@hgu.mrc.ac.uk; sacrib@sac.ac.uk; 47-lfcrescent@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk; 49-lfcrescent@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk; 51-lfcrescent@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk; bionews <bionews@st-andrews.ac.uk>; idir@st-andrews.ac.uk; internal comms <internalcomms@hutton.ac.uk>; bbclist@psb.ugent.be; WATSON Mick <mick.watson@roslin.ed.ac.uk> Subject: SUBCONSCIOUS? BIAS Re: [igmm-dm] [igmm-users] Genome Science, Liverpool, 30th August - 1st September 2016 Dear Organisers Looks like an interesting meeting. Why do you send an email advertising it with just eight male speakers highlighted. I looked on the website and there are a number of women speakers too. This attitude is offensive and off-putting for many scientists and people in general. I decided not to tweet about it, but perhaps I should to make you think more carefully next time. You could even make some amends by sending out a new email and pointing out your initial unthinking bias. Veronica *********************************** Sent from my iPad Veronica van Heyningen CBE FRS Tel: +44 20 7627 4206 Mobile: + 44 7740 965 986 Honorary Professor and Visiting Scientist Institute of Ophthalmology, UCL 11-43 Bath Street London EC1V 9EL & MRC Human Genetics Unit IGMM Crewe Road EDINBURGH EH4 2XU On 26 Jul 2016, at 08:56, Bert Overduin <Bert.Overduin@ed.ac.uk<mailto:Bert.Overduin@ed.ac.uk>> wrote: Forwarding on behalf of Mick Watson: Dear All I'm delighted to invite you to a conference I help organise every year, Genome Science, with speakers who use the latest genomic technologies to tackle problems from across the life sciences: Genome Science 2016 http://genomescience.org.uk/, Liverpool, 30th August - 1st September 2016 We have sessions on: Bioinformatics and Computational genomics Clinical and translational genomics Environmental genomics Developmental biology Genome engineering and synthetic biology (NEW this year) Microbial genomics New Technologies, incl. highlight single cell genomics Plant and animal genomics Vendor sessions Science Communication Career development/opportunities Speakers include: Ed Yong, Science Communicator and author recent book "I contain multitudes" (http://tinyurl.com/zk6qaw3) Dr Kosuke Yusa, Sanger, Genome Engineering Dr Jack Gilbert, Argonne National Laboratory, Microbiome Dr Jose Clemente, Mount Sinai Dr David Aanensen, Sanger, Pathogen Surveillanece Prof Allan Downie, John Innes, Ash Dieback Our very own Jeffrey Schoenebeck! Michael Baym, Harvard, Systems Biology And many many more! I look forward to seeing you there! Cheers Mick The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. -- Bert Overduin, PhD TRAINING AND OUTREACH BIOINFORMATICIAN Bert.Overduin@ed.ac.uk<mailto:Bert.Overduin@ed.ac.uk> orcid.org/0000-0002-5281-8838<http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5281-8838> EDINBURGH GENOMICS The University of Edinburgh Ashworth Laboratories The King's Buildings Charlotte Auerbach Road Edinburgh EH9 3FL Scotland, United Kingdom tel. +44(0)1316507403 http://genomics.ed.ac.uk The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336.