An Overview of the Young Investigator Education Day in Lyon

Hello, my name is Gemma. I am a Young Investigator (YI) board member and Chair of the YI Education Day committee for the Lyon Congress. This week on the blog, I am delighted to give you all an overview of our speakers for our 5^th SIOP YI Education day, which will be held on Wednesday 23^rd October 2019.

The theme for our first session is careers and is titled “Failure is Success in Progress”. Our first speaker is Professor Kathy Pritchard-Jones who is doing our careers talk this year: “How I built a successful research career-learning from my failures.” Professor Pritchard-Jones is the SIOP President Elect, and we are extremely grateful that she is taking time out of her busy schedule to support YI. Professor Pritchard-Jones will be followed by our second speaker Dr Adam Esbenshade, who will  talk about successful academic interviews, and present the results of a survey of Children’s Oncology Group (COG) and SIOP members.

After the coffee break, we have a YI, PODC and Nurse joint session on Mentorship. In this interactive session, after introductions from myself and Dr Jon Fisher (a YI board member and Chair of the YI Mentorship committee), Dr Justin Baker and Dr Cecilia Ugaz Olivares will speak about their very successful SLAOP mentee-mentor relationship. They will be followed by Glenn Mbah, talking about his experiences with mentorship and Dr Marilyn Hockenberry, who will discuss what qualities to look for in a mentor.

The joint session will be followed once again by our extremely popular YI Expert Lunch. This year our Experts will be: Professor Eric Bouffet, Dr Christophe Bergeron, Professor Martha Grootenhuis, Dr Scott Howard, Dr Matthias Schell, Professor Marianne Van de Wetering, Professor Sabine Sarnacki, Professor Alan Davidson, Dr Akira Nakagawara, and Professor Peter Hesseling. The YI Expert Lunch is a free event, and is limited to 100 participants. Registration is required. To book your place please visit our Expert Lunch EventBrite page.

After lunch, the theme of our first afternoon session is “Publish less, Publish better.” In this session, YIs will hear from Professor Peter Newburger and Dr Thomas Gross, the Editor and Deputy Editor of Pediatric Blood and Cancer who will talk about peer review. They will be followed by Dr Bob Phillips who will discuss predatory journals and the pressure to publish, a very important subject for YIs.                                                                                                                                                                                    

The theme of our final three sessions of the afternoon is Global and Cutting Edge Research. Our first speaker in this session is Professor Claire Wakefield who will talk about ethical aspects of trials, and the lessons learned from Precision Medicine. Dr Catherine Lam will tell us about YIs contributions to the WHO initiative, and finally, Dr Trijn Israels will give an overview of the Wilms Tumour Africa Project.

The YI Education day is free to attend for delegates registered to attend the wider congress. If you didn’t sign up at the time of registering, please contact Kenes and ask for the education day to be added to your registration.

YIs can also register to attend only the Education Day for €70 (€100 if registering after 25^th September 2019). To register click here.