Past events
OMH Annual Symposia
2018
The inaugural symposium, held on Monday 2 July in the Richard Doll Building, highlighted Oxford research in many fields including diabetes, obesity, digital health and the interface between the immune system and metabolism. Speakers included Cecilia Lindgren (BDI), James McCullagh (Chemistry), Damian Tyler (DPAG) and Fiona Powrie (Kennedy Institute), and we were delighted to welcome Sir Steve O'Rahilly (MRL, Cambridge) as keynote speaker. Download the 2018 programme.
2019
The second symposium, held on Monday 1 July at the Medical Sciences Teaching Centre, covered different areas including circadian physiology, integrative metabolomics, cancer metabolism, big data analysis in metabolism and health research, and diet and metabolic health. Speakers included David Ray (OCDEM), Aiden Doherty (BDI), Simon Lord (Oncology) and Angela Russell (Chemistry). John O'Neill (LMB, Cambridge) presented an excellent keynote talk at the end of the afternoon. Novo Nordisk provided generous sponsorship for the meeting. Download the 2019 programme.
The 2018 and 2019 symposia brought researchers together from most of the Medical Sciences Division departments, some Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division departments, MRC Harwell, and the Novo Nordisk Research Centre Oxford for an informative and enjoyable day of talks, poster sessions and networking.
2020
We ran our first virtual OMH symposium from Tuesday 30 June to Friday 3 July. Thank you to the excellent line-up of speakers - keynote Dr Erika Pearce based at that time at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics and Oxford group leaders, early career researchers and students - as well as Chairs and participants. The event was very successful and captured metabolism and health-related research across a wide spectrum of systems and disease areas. Download the 2020 programme.
2021
On Wednesday 7 and Thursday 8 July, OMH held its second virtual annual symposium. We were joined by speakers from across Oxford covering a wide range of metabolism-related topics including circadian physiology, NMR metabolomics, iron homeostasis, immuno-metabolism and nutritional epidemiology. Students and postdocs contributed with short oral presentations to give an even broader picture of work going on across the university. We were delighted to welcome keynote speaker Professor Zolt Arany from the University of Pennsylvania to open the symposium with a talk that touched on many areas of biology culminating in a potential new treatment for NAFLD/NASH. Download the 2021 programme.
2022
We held the first in-person OMH Symposium for 3 years on Friday 1 July. Our keynote speaker, Professor Claudia Langenberg from Berlin and Cambridge, gave an insightful and engaging talk describing how she and her colleagues have used genomics and proteomics to understand and manage metabolic disorders. This was followed by talks from researchers on a wide range of topics including diabetes, liver disease, immune responses to COVID-19 and cardiac metabolism given by group leaders, postdocs and students at the University and the Novo Nordisk Research Centre Oxford. Download the 2022 programme.
OMH Researchers' Association
DPAG was the venue for a lively launch event of the Association in February 2019 open to researchers from across the OMH community. Eighteen researchers from the University and MRC Harwell introduced themselves and their work in a lightning talk using a single slide each to capture key points. There were as many researchers attending who came along to listen to the talks rather than speak. We ended the afternoon with refreshments in the Sherrington Library.
The Researchers' Association ran a successful and well-attended Seahorse workshop in May 2019 on 'Measuring Metabolic Engines and Fuels' organised with Agilent Technologies. This was followed in October 2019 by a careers workshop, 'Getting on in academic and research-related careers', with excellent sessions about the range of career options available, how to boost your skills to be successful, and how resources available at the Careers Services can help you get to where you want to be.
In November 2020, Dr Giles Yeo from the Wellcome/MRC Institute of Metabolic Science gave an online talk on 'Is Obesity a Choice?' which attracted a large audience. His talk, which spanned humans, labradors, fruit flies and even the blind Mexican cave fish, was a fascinating guide through the role that genes play in determining our response to food.
