Wedge group member wins best oral presentation by a postdoc at SysBioCancer 2022

Maria Jakobsdottir, a postdoctoral researcher in the Wedge group, was selected to present both a poster and a short presentation at the Institut Curie’s 5th annual Systems Biology of Cancer course at the end of September. The Wedge group would like to congratulate Maria on being awarded best oral presentation by a postdoc for her talk titled “Genotype-Phenotype Interactions: Multiomics of Hypoxia in Prostate Cancer”.

We asked Maria to reflect on her experiences and the highlights of the course:

Favourite talk

It’s hard to choose as the programme was so varied, but if I had to pick one, it would probably be Elana Fertig’s talk about her group’s work on inferring inter-cellular interactions with latent space analysis of spatial multiomics, followed closely by Peter Kharchenko’s talk on detection of genomic aberrations in single cell transcriptomes with population phasing. I really enjoyed their talks as they presented a lot of techniques that I am interested in applying to my work in multiomics.

Most exciting topic

Again, it’s a tie. Many of the talks discussed the progression to using spatial platforms, such as the Visium 10X or Nanostring, to spatially resolve relationships between tumour cells and cells in the microenvironment. I think we’ll definitely be seeing a lot more cancer publications incorporating spatial transcriptomics in the near future. I also really enjoyed the talks that focused on the different methodological approaches for (and common problems encountered when) integrating multimodal data.

Best part of the course

The friendly atmosphere and commitment to collaboration. The course was structured so that almost all of the attendees had to present something (proportional to their career stage). This meant that we all got to know each other over the course of the week, and prompted a lot of conversations that might otherwise not have happened. Attendees were also actively encouraged to ask the invited speakers any questions they had, no matter how small, which can often be intimidating.

Worst part of the course

I’m struggling to think of anything I didn’t like. My only critique would be that a week was too short! There were so many topics that were covered, and I would have liked to hear more about almost all of them.

Would you recommend this course to someone else?

Definitely! I really enjoyed my time in Paris, and came back to Manchester with an enormous reading list that’ll take me a while to work through. The range of talks was quite broad and I think many members of the Wedge group (and others) would have found it a useful experience. I’m looking forward to seeing next year’s programme.