By Jolien Rietkerk
Los Angeles: place of palm trees, endless beaches, and Hollywood stars!
But also, the place for one of the most inspiring experiences a PhD student can wish: a summer school - conference hybrid called Computational Genetics Summer Institute, or CGSI.
For a total of 23 days in July 2022, CGSI consists of a retreat, two short programmes and a middle week, chuck full of science, networking and fun.
My colleague Lianyun and I had the pleasure of participating in the long programme which started with the three-day retreat to Big Bear Lake. Here, talks every morning and afternoon social activities created the perfect relaxed atmosphere to network with fellow students and faculty.
The retreat created a close-knit group that was housed in a frat-house on the UCLA campus for the remainder of the programme. Paired up into double rooms we got a glimpse into the college experience, and may have partied a bit.
Then, the first short programme started. This week-long programme filled with talks and networking was intense, there were many additional students and faculty joining this week and we ourselves were invited to give chalk-talks in daily affinity groups. Please listen to a voice recording of the essence of Jolien's Chalk Talk at CGSI here.
A great thing about CGSI is that the talks are available on youtube afterwards!
From the first-week talks, I highly recommend the interested reader to listen to the talks that were most memorable and interesting to me (John Novembre, Melissa Gymrek, Jonathan Flint):
The second week, or middle week, slowed down a bit. There were fewer talks and the Wednesday was free to let us recover, recharge and enjoy the city. Additionally, there was a concert at the Hollywood bowl (a yearly tradition).
From talks that were given this week I want give a shout out to my supervisor's talk on phenotype imputation (Na Cai), as well as two other talks that really stayed with me (Nick Mancuso, Rayan Chikhi):
Last but not least, the second short programme, the last week of the summerschool, included some more networking, and social events similar to those of the first week. And of course more talks, here are my top picks (Eimear Kenny, Bogdan Pasanuic):
The exposure to so much science from different areas within computational genetics was enlightening, I remember reading a paper afterwards in record time, simply because I could better understand how science communicated and truly improved my English as well.
Also, making research friends through networking made for life-long connections with peers. I can’t do anything else than highly recommend the experience to all PhD students within the field and thank the organizers for inviting Lianyun and me to participate in 2022.