Variant Bio to Support the American Society of Human Genetics’ Developing Country Awards Program
Part of my initial draw towards genetics was the speed of innovation and the excitement of new discoveries. To me, it was impossible not to feel inspired by the findings coming from initiatives like the Human Genome Project. While this (thankfully) no longer manifests as a stack of article printouts on my desk, these days, as Vice President of Computational Genetics at Variant Bio, my publication alerts and twitter feed are a seemingly endless stream of interesting and potentially important findings from researchers in the field.
While online tools and publications make finding information about specific areas of genetics so much easier than a decade ago, I still find it invaluable to interact with researchers directly and get insight into how the field is changing at a macro level.
Throughout my career, I have been fortunate to receive support from early mentors and employers in order to participate in key scientific conferences such as the American Society of Human Genetics’ (ASHG) annual meeting. This conference is one that I and others at Variant Bio have found particularly impactful in our careers.
For this reason, I am thrilled to announce that Variant Bio will be supporting the 2022 ASHG Developing Country Awards Program (see ASHG’s official press release here). This program aims to support researchers living in countries categorized by the World Bank as low-income or lower-middle-income (see here for a full list of eligible countries) to receive up to $3,000 each toward their participation in the ASHG Annual Meeting. As a company committed to increasing the inclusion of underrepresented populations in genomic research, it only makes sense that Variant Bio contribute to this program.
The 2022 Developing Country Awards are administered by ASHG and interested applicants can indicate they would like to be considered for the award when they submit an abstract online through the ASHG 2022 Annual meeting website. Details about the award can be found here.
