Attending a Conference in Chile from the Comfort of My Living Room
A couple of months ago, when things began to shut down and stay-at-home orders were put into place because of COVID-19, there was a surge of articles online on how to deal with this new, isolated way of life. One article, which my colleagues at Variant Bio circulated, was about how, during the Great Plague in London, Sir Isaac Newton was forced to work from home and came up with some of the best ideas of his career (great, no pressure!). This image of the lone scientist revolutionizing the world seems completely outdated with how science is done in the 21st century, as a distinctly social undertaking. Nowadays, to be successful in science and biotechnology, it is critical to network, collaborate, and discuss ideas with other researchers to make meaningful connections that can accelerate one’s knowledge. Scientific conferences and the interpersonal connections they foster have become integral to this process of exchange.
Variant Bio’s partnership approach is an excellent example of this principle of collaboration and interaction. All our studies depend on partnerships and relationships with people who are located all around the world. Many of these initial connections happen at scientific conferences, which is why we try to attend a variety of conferences in genetics, anthropology, etc. throughout the year. Like many events, these in-person plans came to an abrupt halt due to the coronavirus pandemic. As we adjusted to the new normal of working from home and spending countless hours on Zoom (see our post here), we realized that the conferences we planned to attend were also adapting and transitioning to a virtual model. So, two weeks ago, instead of flying to Santiago, Chile to attend the 5th Global Genomic Medicine Collaborative Conference (G2MC), I found myself in my living room with a cup of coffee on Zoom waiting for the first session of G2MC to start.
Before I go into more detail about my first virtual conference experience, I’d like to take a step back and give a bit of background on my own experiences with scientific conferences. I have been fortunate to attend many conferences during my career so far. I did my PhD at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), a small, private research institute in the middle of Long Island, NY which is renowned for its excellent meetings and academic programs. So, during my PhD, in addition to traveling to conferences every year to present my own work, I was able to occasionally go to CSHL meetings, too. Once you attend a decent number of conferences in a specific field, a pattern begins to emerge in the group of scientists who serve as invited speakers. Meeting organizers often want to have a good line-up of talks and invite big-name speakers to attract an audience and guarantee high quality science. However, this has its downsides as well. In its elitism, such an approach necessarily excludes many people from presenting their results and makes it difficult for early career scientists or researchers from less-well known institutions to get the exposure they deserve. Organizers try to counter this by having specific sessions in conferences for early stage scientists, but many times these researchers are from well-known labs, limiting the diversity of views.
This is obviously not the only hurdle in attending conferences. The costs associated with registration and travel are often prohibitive for many researchers. The complications increase for those who need visas to travel to the conference location (especially considering the restrictive immigration system of the US, for example). Travel scholarships are designed to combat some of these issues, but it is not just money that presents an obstacle. Gender disparities (aren’t we tired of the “manel” problem?), dependent care, and inaccessible venues/talks can all exclude people from these meetings. So why are people so keen to go anyways?
Attending meetings ensures that we keep up with new research in the field and that we develop relationships with researchers who might not otherwise be easy to meet. Recent findings are often presented at conferences years before they are published. Not going means we risk losing touch with the true cutting edge, which is so important for a company like ours. Unfortunately, this creates a self-sustaining loop in which primarily only members of big labs or rich companies attend conferences, thereby gaining access to information that others might not, and ultimately further cementing their position ahead of the pack.
Virtual conferences have the potential of countering many of these problems. In a way, they can democratize attendance by presenting lower initial costs for the organizers, (hopefully) leading to lower signup fees for attendees. Further, the lack of travel costs lowers the barrier to entry. I should note here that G2MC is already an outlier in the conference world in that it does not require any registration fees, making it accessible to a wider audience.
The biggest argument against virtual conferences might be the lack of face-to-face interaction. But perhaps this just requires a bit of creativity to get around. In G2MC, there were small workshops organized before the main sessions where people could discuss specific topics of interest. Also, during the question and answer section attendees could “raise their hand” and then be unmuted by the panel to comment or ask a question. Additionally, the ability to type in a question in the “chat” box may encourage some people to ask questions when they would have been intimidated to do so in a room full of people, especially if one is a student. Some panelists also used a tool to poll the room and show the answers in real time. And, for many of these organizers, this was the first time they were holding a virtual conference! Imagine the possibilities. One idea I heard of is a system to upvote questions posted in a Q&A sidebar, ensuring that the most important questions get asked, and not only the ones from PIs who love to hear themselves talk.
All in all, I would say that the G2MC conference was pretty successful. The main topic of the meeting was around how to implement genomic medicine in low resource settings. There were talks around genomic initiatives in low and middle income countries, the barriers these have faced, and how they may be overcome. One particular point that came up multiple times was that, while many projects have until now depended on outsourcing samples for sequencing and analysis, it is critical to start focusing on ways to build these capacities locally. This practice would allow both parties in the collaboration to benefit from the interaction. This is also something that we feel very passionately about at Variant Bio, and strive to address with our benefit sharing approach.
So does this mean we should go virtual for good? Earlier in this post, I mentioned how social of an endeavor science really is. If the stereotype of the old white man with a big beard sitting alone in his study is outdated, I can tell you from experience that the image of two scientists coming up with an idea that might change the world during a conference social hour is not. At least at the G2MC conference there were no separate social events. Even though it may be possible to host social sessions virtually, I still think face-to-face organic interactions are incredibly difficult to recreate.
Happy hours, networking sessions, end-of-conference parties — these have their own set of problems, but in their most positive form they are the glue that keeps the scientific community together. No Zoom call or virtual workshop can completely replace the social aspect of human interaction (as also noted by our Ethics Advisory Board member and anthropologist Dr. Adia Benton, in a recent post, here).
I’m not suggesting that I have answers to these questions (which have also been discussed elsewhere¹,²), but I do think that we should use this pause imposed by the pandemic to re-evaluate the status quo when it comes to academic conferences. International air travel to conferences several times a year puts a huge strain on our environment, which we at Variant Bio are trying to minimize as much as possible. Visa issues can present huge hurdles for international students and researchers from countries disproportionately targeted by countries that hold most scientific conferences. People with kids or other dependents can’t just take a week off from their responsibilities as caretakers. Maybe virtual conferences should be the norm, occasionally interspersed with in-person meetings that focus on inclusivity in order to keep the personal connections alive. In the meantime, we at Variant Bio are getting ready for our next virtual conference (this time the European Society of Human Genetics, or ESHG, in Berlin!) live from our living rooms.
- Achakulvisut, Titipat, Tulakan Ruangrong, Isil Bilgin, Sofie Van Den Bossche, Brad Wyble, Dan Fm Goodman, and Konrad P. Kording. 2020. “Improving on Legacy Conferences by Moving Online.” eLife 9 (April). https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.57892.
- Sarabipour, Sarvenaz, Benjamin Schwessinger, Fiona N. Mumoki, Aneth D. Mwakilili, Aziz Khan, Humberto J. Debat, Pablo J. Sáez, Samantha Seah, and Tomislav Mestrovic. 2020. “Evaluating Features of Scientific Conferences: A Call for Improvements.” bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.02.022079.
