Leducq meeting in the sun

We're all back at work, after some great meeting days in San Diego. We attended the third meeting of the CAD genomics group, a consortia founded by Leducq. The Leducq foundation supports international collaboration in the field of cardiovascular research. Our devoted blog readers might have read some post about our previous meetings (Munich, NYC) and again, as always, we had a great time.

The CAD genomic group.

Arriving from different locations, the IIEG leducq team rejoined on Wednesday at the reception in La Jolla. Benedikt and Ingrid came down from LA (already adjusted to the PST) and Maria, Jaafar, Zouhair and Redouane from Lübeck (with jetlag).

The CAD genomics meeting lasted three days, from Wednesday until Saturday. On the first day, we had general presentations from all the seven sites (LA, San Diego, NYC, Leicester, Paris, Munich and Lübeck). On the second day, we first discussed the functional implication and new scientific results of the 9p21 locus, the most famous CAD GWAS hit. In the second session that day, we had some updates by the bioinformatics group.

First day first session. Jeanette joined with Skype (laptop).

In the afternoon, Eric Scott took us to a very great hike in the Torrey Pines state reserve park. It was a really fantastic walk and it was nice to get our in the sun.

On our way down to the beach.

Walking at the beach.

On Saturday, the wet-lab people had some time off and went to visit San Diego. They went to the old town and walked all the way down to the marina and balboa park. The bioinformatics group had their sub meeting discussing future projects and finalizing their first joint analysis. (We hope we can blog about the paper soon). In the evening we met back at our hotel, all really tired from too much walking or too much thinking.

Too much walking.

Too much thinking.

On Sunday, our flight was not leaving before 7.40 pm, so we had a lot of time to check out La Jolla. Again, we walked more than most Americans normally do (based on the comment of a local taxi driver). In total we walked around 12 miles (around 19 km), some extra miles due to abruptly ending sidewalks.

Happy jumping scientists, with some happier than others?

All but one arrived safe home, the one that didn't is Redouane who is visiting our dear collaborators at the UCLA for two months. (We look forward to hearing from him).

MSP and IB