Bordeaux Meeting Recap

ISACB meeting in Bordeaux was the first event since the creation of the ISACB Women’s Leadership Committee and we were thrilled to partner with the Early Career folks for an informal discussion at La Comtesse. Together we discussed what types of events and programs ISACB members in attendance would like to see at future meetings and came up with several ideas such as a session on unconscious bias training, CV or personal statement workshops, and a formal poster session where individuals could compete for a prize.  

Additionally, we discussed the importance of individuals from minority and underrepresented groups to seeing “people like them” in positions of leadership. To that end,  the demographics of the presenters at the Bordeaux meeting were analyzed. As the fields of Cardiology, Cardiothoracic Surgery, and Bioengineering have historically been male-dominated it is refreshing to see that more females are perusing research and training in these fields, as seen by the postdoc and student numbers. 39% of those registered were female as were 39% of all speakers. Breaking that number down further we found that invited speakers were more likely to be male, highlighting an area that can work to improve upon at future meetings. Overall, these number are encouraging and the WLC looks forward to working with future planning committees to ensure that we improve upon our current success. In the future, we would like to collect additional demographic data up registrants to allow for more comprehensive assessments.

ISACB + ISVTE 2019 Zurich

Check back for updates on our planned gathering for Zurich in 2019!