Category Archives: Conferences

OPIGlet’s First Conference: PEGS Boston 2026

Hello everyone!

For my very first blog post, I’m excited to share my experience attending and speaking at my first conference.

I was invited to present at the Protein & Antibody Engineering Summit (PEGS) Boston 2026 on behalf of OPIG. The conference ran from May 10–15, and like many antibodies-stream OPIGlets before me, I delivered the OPIG tools short course. This formed part of a three-hour session titled In silico and Machine Learning Tools for Antibody Design and Developability Predictions. The short courses took place on the Sunday, before the main conference officially began on Monday, so somewhat terrifyingly, I gave a conference talk before I had ever attended one.

I arrived in Boston on Saturday after a long day of travel and was pleasantly surprised by a free bus into downtown (thanks, Boston MBTA). After a much-needed sleep, I headed to the conference centre, checked into my hotel (thank you, PEGS team), and tried not to explode from nerves. Thankfully, the talk went well; there were plenty of questions, and I quickly settled into speaking in front of the group. With an audience of around 50 people—only slightly larger than an OPIG group meeting—it felt like familiar territory.

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Networks beyond proteins: a Lake Como summer school

My DPhil uses network representations of protein complexes to predict drug targets, so when a summer school on complex networks came up, I wanted to see what tools and ideas from the broader field I might be missing. The Lake Como School on Complex Networks  brought together students and postdocs from universities around the world to discuss recent applications and future possibilities using networks. This was the school’s 10-year anniversary, so we were honoured to have many of the lectures given by founding members of the society.

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Biologic Summit 2026

This year we (Fabian and Henriette) were invited to speak at the Biologic Summit. The conference took place January 20-22 in San Diego. Fabian presented his work on conformational ensembles of antibodies [1] in the “Data Strategies and the Future of AI Models” track. Henriette presented her work on LICHEN [2], a tool to generate an antibody light sequence for a specific heavy sequence, in the “ML/AI for Biologics Developability, Optimization and de novo Design” track. Below we give some general highlights of the conference, and some talks we enjoyed. We would like to thank the organisers for the opportunity to discuss our research and hear about the latest developments in harnessing ML for design and optimisation of antibodies.  

General feedback

  • Industry focused conference. Biologic Summit is strongly attended by industry, making this conference an excellent opportunity to promote your tools/databases, and to connect with companies. The conference is attended by both start-ups as big pharma companies. 
  • Medium size conference. With approximately 250 attendees, the Biologic Summit provides a good opportunity to connect with researchers from a wide range of disciplines. Held concurrently with Protein Science and Production Week (PepTalk) and sharing the same venue, the event further benefited from a diverse mix of scientific backgrounds and expertise. 
  • Panel and table discussions. Throughout the three days there where various table discussions and panel discussions organised. These are good places to learn about general interest and challenges in the field. 
  • Well-organised conference. The conference is well-organised with a clear schedule and enough breaks to recharge and connect. Most talks are scheduled for 30 minutes with around 4 talks per block.
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Dispatches from Lisbon

Tiles, tiles, as far as the eye can see. Conquerors on horseback storming into the breach; proud merchant ships cresting ocean waves; pious monks and shepherds tending to their flocks; Christ bearing the cross to Calvary—in intricate tones of blue and white on tin-glazed ceramic tilework. Vedi Napoli e poi muori the Sage of Weimar once wrote—to see Naples and die. But had he been to Lisbon?

The azulejos of the city’s numerous magnificent monasteries are far from the only thing for the weary PhD student to admire. Lisbon has no shortage of imposing bridges and striking towers, historically fraught monuments and charming art galleries. Crumbling old castles and revitalised industrial quarters butt up against the Airbnbs-and-expats district, somewhere between property speculation and the sea. An endearing flock of magellanic penguins paddles away an afternoon in their enclosure at the local aquarium (which is excellent), and an alarming proliferation of custard-based pastries invites one to indulge.

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Nanobodies® galore in Utrecht

At the end of September, I had the opportunity to present at the 4th Single-Domain Antibody (sdAb/VHH) Conference hosted in the city of Utrecht. The sdAb conference is a biennial event, and was held for the first time in Bonn (2019), then in Brussels (2021) and Paris (2023), before coming to the Netherlands this year.

This was the first time I’d attended a VHH-focused conference, and I was taken aback at just how large the community is; the Jaarbeurs ‘Supernova’ event hall was completely sold out, with over 400 researchers in attendance (pictures below courtesy of the organisers). The buzz reflects the ever growing interest in sdAbs as tools to discover new fundamental biology, vectors for diagnosing disease, and as prophylactic or curative therapeutics. Most every disease indication was represented at the conference, from anticancer and antiviral sdAbs to antivenom sdAbs (both for use in lateral flow tests to diagnose the snake that bit you, and as quick ‘epipen’-like therapeutics accessible even in the most remote parts of the world).

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Reflections on GRC CADD 2025: A Week of Insight, Innovation, and Baseball

Henry

Back in July, some very lucky OPIGlets ventured across the pond to discover life in Southern Maine (and Boston!). For someone visiting Boston for the first time, no trip would be complete without a Red Sox game—a thoroughly enjoyable highlight (see Figure 1). While we were there, we also went to Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Computer Aided Drug Design (CADD).

A flock of OPIGlets taking in the Fenway Park experience at a Red Sox game.
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ISMB/ECCB conference feedback 

The ISMB/ECCB conference took place in Liverpool this year. So, a couple of OPIGlets took the train up north to attend this biyearly joint conference. Here we will give some general feedback on the conference and highlight some interesting talks/posters. 

General feedback 

ISMB/ECCB is a 4.5 day conference starting on the Sunday evening and running until Thursday evening. The conference is attended by around 2500 people, mostly from academic groups around the world. With more than 20 different tracks, it is a broad conference with lots of tracks happening at the same time. As always, it is thus recommended to have a look at the schedule beforehand to not get too overwhelmed. Each day there is one keynote, two poster sessions, and three blocks of talks. These talks are often given by PIs, but also PostDocs and PhD students get the opportunity to present. There are also some smaller slots for highlighting posters which are presented that day. 

This year there was a very interesting line-up of Distinguished Keynote speakers. The conference was kicked off by John Jumper talking about AlphaFold2, with a focus on how the team went about the various problems during the process of going from the initial AlphaFold model to AlphaFold2. On Monday Prof. Amos Bairoch talked about biocuration and importance and challenges of public databases. He discussed the FAIR principles for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable for data management [1]. The next Keynote was by Prof. James Zou about computational biology in the age of AI agents (later more). On Wednesday we had our own Prof. Charlotte Deane (woo!) talking about structure-based drug discovery with a focus on the importance of baselines and benchmarking. The conference was ended by a short interview with Prof. David Baker, followed by a talk from Prof. Fabian Theis on decoding cellular systems. He discussed Cellflow [2], an AI tool that predicts how perturbations like drugs effect the cellular phenotype. 

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Conference feedback: Protein Society Annual Symposium

Recently, a couple of OPIG members had the opportunity to attend and present at the 39th Annual Symposium of the Protein Society—a not-for-profit scholarly society founded in 1985 that focuses on protein structure, function, and design—held in San Francisco.

The PS39 schedule was well designed, offering a balance between plenary talks, themed parallel sessions, and networking opportunities. A wide range of topics was covered, including transient protein states, supramolecular assemblies, proteostasis, and circadian clocks. This allowed us to follow areas of personal interest, both related and unrelated to our research, while exploring unfamiliar fields. Although many talks were biology-heavy, they were generally pitched at an accessible level for those from other disciplines (ie. the small molecules side of OPIG). Presentations almost always included results from both in silico and experimental approaches, with relatively few focusing exclusively on one or the other; a very nifty thing to see as people who mostly just dream of experimental validation! In contrast to our generalisable-model-focus, many of the researchers presenting had dedicated years to studying a single protein or system, uncovering its nuances in a way that made for some neat storytelling.

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An insight into mega-conferences – attending ESCMID Global 2025

I suppose it really hit me when the Viennese border control officer asked, “Ah, you must be here for the conference?” That’s when I realised: this wasn’t just any event. ESCMID Global isn’t your average gathering of lab coat enthusiasts, but rather one of the largest clinical infectious disease conferences in the world. Over 16,000 attendees packed into Vienna for their 35th annual congress.

So, was flying across Europe to attend the Glastonbury of conferences, minus the mud, plus the microbes, worth it?

Well… it depends on what you’re hoping to get out of it. If you’re an academic, you might find that a lot of the sessions lean heavily towards the clinical side of things. On the plus side, it made it easier to narrow down my schedule – with over a dozen sessions happening at any one time, a bit of decisiveness goes a long way. Personally, I found the big-name, high-level keynotes and annual updates from organisations like EUCAST the most accessible and informative.

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