On Monday 12 March 2018, over 160 people convened at Wolfson College in a typically rainy Oxford for the EACR conference Radiation Break-through 2018: from DNA damage responses to precision cancer therapy. Over the following two and a half days 154 participants witnessed exceptional scientific lectures from 17 invited speakers and 7 proffered paper authors, including Keynote lectures from Steve Jackson (University of Cambridge, UK) and Amato Giaccia (Stanford University, USA). We are grateful to the 5 meeting sponsors and were happy to be joined by 7 exhibitors in the trade exhibition. Our congratulations go to the Poster Prize award winners: Cristina Espinosa-Diez and Julie Nonnekens, and also to the EACR Meeting Bursary winners: Klaudia Al-Refae, Amy Buckley, Cristina Espinosa-Diez, Julia Ketteler, Purba Nag and Patricia Pereira.
Meet the Experts
The conference hosted a Meet the Expert Session on Tuesday afternoon, in which the influential researchers Karlene Cimprich, Madalena Tarsounas and Verena Jendrossek discussed the personal and academic paths that lead to their current positions. They talked openly and honestly about tough decisions, such as when is a good time to start a family. In a discussion with the audience, the speakers shared advice including the benefits of changing institution and location during the early stages of a research career.
“Lively poster sessions”
The two interactive Poster Defence Sessions proved very popular and generated an excited atmosphere in the exhibition hall with great opportunities for early career researchers to get feedback on their work from senior scientists. There was also enthusiastic discussions on the possibility of collaborations between countries.
Happy participants mean happy organisers
Initial feedback has been very positive with participants highlighting the great atmosphere, high quality talks and the networking opportunities that were only possible because of the small size of the conference.
“It was an invaluable experience where as a PhD student I gained further insight into the field and constructive feedback on my own work via the excellent poster sessions.”
“Excellent speakers, very lively poster sessions.”
“It was a great congress. It covers all the topics about DNA repair, tumor microenvironment and RT. I love that it was a small conference as well, with a lot of interaction”
