Our 27th annual scientific meeting was held in the beautiful building of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland. We had 165 registered delegates, and were kindly supported by 15 sponsors.

We had a wide variety of posters submitted, representing almost every university and Clinical Genetics department in Ireland. All posters will be freely available to delegates on our website, password protected, from now to December 2024. From these, we chose 10 excellent speakers who presented high calibre research findings.

This was the first year that ISHG funded summer studentships and our three successful students presented the findings of their completed projects. All had done an excellent job, within a short timeframe, and had clearly learnt a lot in the process.

We had four keynote speakers this year. We began with Prof Aidan Corvin, who talked about ‘The Enigma of the Mind, the Interface between Psychiatry and Genomics’. He discussed the high proportion of heritability in schizophrenia, along with other psychiatric disorders such as bipolar disorder, autism, ADHD and PTSD. We learnt about specific, high-risk copy number variants and single gene variants, allowing for identification of which patients need closer surveillance, and areas for novel drug therapies.

Prof Orla Hardiman spoke on ‘Gene Hunting in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)’ and shared her many years of expertise in this field. She discussed the commonest genetic predisposition genes found in ALS patients in Ireland. She also gave insights into reasons for differences in age of onset, incomplete penetrance and the phenotypic variation within, and between, families with ALS.

Prof Anna Murray discussed ‘Genomic Insights into Mechanisms and Consequences of Reproductive Aging and Menopause’. She described reproductive physiology, the risk factors linked with early and late menopause, and their associated morbidities. We heard about cancer predisposition genes and their links with age of onset of menopause, along with other genes, which are associated with specific menopausal symptoms, e.g. vasovagal effects, and are potential drug targets.

Prof David Lyons gave our last key note talk on ‘What can Zebrafish teach us about Human Genetics?’ This was a very entertaining talk on what we can discover from zebrafish with many fascinating videos and microscopic images of zebrafish. His research on myelination of zebrafish spines, and their recovery after spinal cord injury, shows the potential of using these methods to improve treatments in human neurological disease.

We were delighted to award conference prizes this year – see below for details of our winners. We awarded prizes for the best post-doctoral and best post-graduate oral talks, best basic science poster and best clinical poster. It was a highlight to be joined by our ESHG DNA Day Essay competition winners. These school students competed for the European prize, and were awarded our ISHG prize for best Irish entries. We hope that the competition will encourage them to continue their studies in the field of genetics. Our most prestigious award was the presentation of our new honorary member, Professor Michael Gill. He gave an inspiring talk about his distinguished career and many achievements.

I would like to thank all those who attended and supported our conference and look forward to seeing you again next year. Our next meeting will be held on Friday 12th September in Maynooth University.

ESHG Fellowship award – Mr Corey Alwell

Post-doctoral award – Dr Shauna Quinn

Basic Scientific Poster award – Ms Rasha Shraim

Clinical Poster award – Mr Richard O’Connaill

First place –                   Guan Hui Lin, Christian Brothers College, Cork, Co. Cork

Joint second place –      Connor Doyle, St Eunans College, Letterkenny, Co. Donegal

                                      Jahnavi Reddy Tumma, Confey College, Lexlip, Co. Kildare