During my flight to Boston I read “Regenesis”, the interesting genomic science book by Professor George Church, which was a gift from my friend Dr. Raminderpal Singh.
On Wednesday evening I had a very interesting conversation in Boston with both of them. Neither of them needs an introduction in the genomics world, but for those of you outside the field:
Raminder is Vice-president at Eagle Genomics and Advisor at Kanteron Systems.
June 28 and 29 I attended, along with my friend John Memarian, President & CCO of my company Kanteron Systems, the Festival of Genomics Boston, as a Microsoft Genomics Group partner.
Although the show was small, it was a great opportunity to network with industry and academic experts (from Harvard Professors to Illumina executives) and learn.
From scientific posters to the latest sequencing technologies, from robotic arms to genomics experiments in space, it was great #geekfun.
May 27 I was invited to participate in the “Computing in Cancer Workshop” organized by Microsoft Research in Cambridge.
It was a great opportunity to network, meet with colleagues and other researchers, and especially to learn a lot.
The fascinating lectures were:
Antonio Criminisi (Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research): Machine Learning for Medical Image Analysis Jasmin Fisher (Senior Researcher, Microsoft Research): Virtual Models of Cancer Giles Maskell (President, Royal College of Radiologists): Current problems in diagnostic radiology Fiona Gilbert (Head of the Department of Radiology, University of Cambridge) Dennis Wang (Senior Bioinformatics Scientist, AstraZeneca): Predicting drug combinations and biomarkers of response: a crowd-sourced solution Florian Markowetz (University of Cambridge, CRUK Cambridge Institute): Quantifying patterns of tumour evolution Francesca Buffa (Associate Professor, Department of Oncology, University of Oxford): In-silico systems biology and functional genomics approaches to accelerate biomarker discovery Hoifung Poon (Researcher, Microsoft Research): Machine Reading for Cancer Panomics Raj Jena (Academic Consultant Clinical Oncologist, Cambridge University Hospitals): Computing for Radiation Oncology – from cell culture to the clinic Bertie Gottgens (Professor of Molecular Haematology, University of Cambridge): Defining Cell States and Regulatory Networks using Single Cell Genomics
[More pictures here]
Last Saturday I had the pleasure to attend Oxford’s Alumni Weekend with my son.
I knew he would not be the only teenager there, but I was surprised to see kids even younger than him accompanying their parents. The truth is that I wish I had brought him earlier. I’ll try to bring my daughter to the next one.
Besides the obvious networking opportunity, the true pleasure was to attend interesting lectures delivered by top academics, and to see my son actually interested in those lectures!
Yesterday I attended the 11th Medical Innovations Summit held at the Royal Society of Medicine.
Like everyone else, I usually attend these events because there is a chance you may get to actually listen to an interesting presenter, or learn about a true innovation. But I usually leave disappointed due to a number of reasons like too much hype and lack of substance, bad organisation, “innovations” that are not really innovations, or bad presenters.
Tuesday July 7th I was also invited, this time by Prof Tony Young (National Clinical Director for Innovation NHS England), to speak at the MedTech event held at University College London Partners.
The other three speakers also talked about different aspects of MedTech:
Jim Dawton, Director Great Fridays “Disrupting Healthcare through Design” Henrietta Hughes, Regional Medical Director, NHS England ‘Innovation From the Frontline of Primary Care` Prof. Jo Martin, National Clinical Director for Pathology, ‘eCPD and More’ It was also another great event for networking, with over 100 people there, all related to MedTech.
Tuesday July 7th, I was invited to participate in a round table at the “Annual Networking Conference on Healthcare Efficiency through Technology: BIG DATA and Clinical Genomics” event.
It was a pleasure and an honor to share the stage and discuss the state of Clinical Genomics with speakers as distinguished as Prof. Tim Hubbard, Head of Bioinformatics (Genomics England); Dr Johnny Marshall, Director of Policy (NHS Confederation); or my friend Dr.
