• Published:September 23rd, 2008
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• Category:Uncategorized

Welcome to the PHG Foundation blog.

Different parts of the website can fill you in on our major aims and projects based around deriving better health for people and populations from biomedical advances, particularly human genetics and genomics. This blog is an opportunity to mention some more behind-the-scenes stuff.

We don’t spend all our time in our offices in Cambridge. Last week three of our team attended the British Society of Human Genetics (BSHG) annual meeting at the University of York, where there are some very nice ducks and other water birds. Possibly more to the point, they also have spacious lecture theatres, making it an excellent place for people from different branches of genetics to come together and discuss progress and plans. This includes specialists in clinical and molecular genetics and a whole host of others, including people who work in policy, ethics, law, regulation, health economics, education and other areas related to genetics and genomics. Not surprisingly there are all sorts of smaller meetings in addition to the scientific programme, and lots of opportunities for informal networking.

There are also poster presentations and trade stands, mostly exhibiting glossy brochures and funky laboratory equipment, liberally strewn with sweets, pens and post-it notes to tempt poor scientists to take a closer look. We took along several posters about our work for people to inspect, and for the first time this year we also had a trade stand so they could find out more about us, or in some cases just boost their blood sugar with chocolate before taking in another batch of lectures.

I certainly enjoyed meeting some new people and telling them about what we do, and I also realised that a key component of effective scientific communication is: close proximity to the coffee supplies.

PHG Foundation exhibition stand