Australasian Genomic Technologies Association (AGTA) conference 2017

The 17th annual conference of the Australasian Genomic Technologies Association (AGTA) will be held in Tasmania at the Hotel Grand Chancellor from 29 October–1 November 2017. 

It is a must-attend event for researchers and industry representatives working with genomic technologies in a variety of contexts, including platform development, medical genomics, functional genomics, non-model systems, epigenomics and plant genomics. The conference also offers an important opportunity for computational biologists, bioinformaticians and data visualisation specialists to interact with technologists and biologists. This is one of the reasons that the Australian genomics community has a dynamic cross-disciplinary and innovative approach to genomic analysis, and is at the forefront of analysis tools for new types of ‘omics’ data.

AGTA returns to Tasmania for the second time after a successful meeting in 2010. The island state has since become an even more sought out conference location thanks to the addition of local attractions such as the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona), which is also the location of the AGTA17 conference dinner.

The conference is broadly focused on all aspects of genomic technologies and their uses and attracts a diverse and well-engaged audience. The event will engage researchers, industry members and other stakeholders from a wide cross-section of Australian and New Zealand research institutes, genomic service providers, clinical facilities and universities — eager to learn about new and evolving technologies and to hear how those technologies are being applied to genomics research.

The conference will feature an exciting line-up of presenters and topics covering new approaches to genome assembly, microbial and single-cell genomics, as well as in silico prediction of functionality, dogs, devils and more. Some of the high-profile speakers to be presenting at the conference include:

• Elinor Karlsson, director of the Vertebrate Genomics group at the Broad Institute and leader of the ‘Darwin’s Dogs’ project
• Deanna Church, senior director of application at 10xGenomics and genome assembly expert 
• Pauline Ng from the Genome Institute of Singapore and creator of the SIFT algorithm for mutation prediction
• Kimberly Reynolds from the Green Center for Systems Biology at UT Southwestern

Image credit: ©iStockphoto.com/Bob Balestri