Convention Case Studies

The 22nd Human Genome Meeting (HGM 2018)

The Human Genome Organization (HUGO) held the Human Genome Meeting 2018 in Yokohama. This yearly meeting intends to strengthen the network and relations between the scientists dedicated to the colossal task of deciphering the human genome and discovering new therapeutic possibilities.

Involved in numerous international collaborative projects such as ENCODE, the Human Cell Atlas and the Roadmap Epigenomic project, Japan contributed to the genome community largely. With Pacifico Yokohama site in Japan, selected as the location for HGM 2018, over 460 scientists and professionals of academic fields worldwide participated the 4-day meeting and the 12 symposiums that were held.

Conference Overview

Event Name	The 22nd Human Genome Meeting (HGM 2018)
Dates	March 12-15, 2018
Location	Pacifico Yokohama (Pacific Convention Plaza Yokohama)
Attendance	463

“The success of your events is the DNA of Japan”

Interview with Dr. Piero Carninci
Chair, Local Organizing Committee (HGM 2018)
Deputy Director at the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences
Visiting Professor at Yokohama City University

What reasons led your organization and yourself to plan this year’s meeting in Japan, and in your opinion, what were the best assets of the Pacifico Yokohama candidature?

Yokohama is a very attractive city built around a comprehensive center, located in the vicinity of an international airport and a wonderful, flexible conference venue. Plenty of high quality hotels and restaurants can be found in very close proximity, giving organizing committees all the means of being able to offer a mix of strong event program with fun social and networking activities. Also, the blend of quality facilities and available local support that is found all throughout Japan is state of the art.

I accepted the proposal to organize this meeting by the HUGO Organization because I really believe we needed to make Japan a very much central spot in this kind of gatherings. We want to give Japanese scientists an opportunity to talk, interact and collaborate much more with the leading experts that are abroad- by bringing them here. In the hope that this meeting would really help to catalyze this kind of project, I accepted the offer to become the chairperson of this congress edition.

As an expatriate who loves to be in Japan, I would like to see many people visiting Japan and really enjoy this place that I find so fascinating. I have moved to Japan 23 years ago, and very often I really want to show to all of my colleagues in the scientific community what the place where I live is like. Many scientists in Europe and America don’t know what Japan is like. Organizing a meeting is a great chance to show to all of them the many interesting things we have here.

It’s also good to have organized this meeting in Japan to advertise how great Japan is as a place to do research. And this contributes to the internationalization of science- which I believe has to be international. I would say my main motivation to become an event organizer comes from my strong belief that internationalization of science is of crucial importance.