The COG-UK consortium has over 500 members with a range of scientific and business expertise in genomics, bioinformatics, operations, clinical science and public health. Women in COG is a supportive network created to share experiences and knowledge and to promote science careers in women and girls.
Who would you like to see at the next Women in COG event?
Perhaps you know an inspirational professional in STEM with a compelling story to tell, or a supportive mentor (male or female) who is passionate about supporting women in science.
We want to hear from you!
For the last edition of Women in COG, our Associate Director, Dr Katerina Galai, spoke to Dr Sam Barrell about her career as an accomplished healthcare leader, including her leadership role at Europe’s largest single-site biomedical research organisation, the Francis Crick Institute, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Before joining the Crick, Sam led the formation of the South Devon and Torbay Clinical Commissioning Group, after which she took up the role of Chief Executive of the Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust.
During the peak of the pandemic Professor Mariana Viegas (Professor of Clinical Virology at the Faculty of Exact Sciences of the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina), saw an opportunity to brainstorm, create and coordinate the Argentine Consortium for SARS-CoV-2 Genomics (PAIS project). She spoke to our Communications Coordinator, Dr Laia Delgado Callico, at our penultimate Women in COG event of the year.
Professor Sharon Peacock was in conversation with Dame Kate Bingham for our October Women in COG edition, where they discussed her experiences of leading the UK Vaccine Taskforce, the importance of having women in leadership roles, and her new book ‘The Long Shot: The Inside Story of the Race to Vaccinate Britain’.
Professor Emma Thomson, OBE, is a Professor in Infectious Diseases at the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research. We spoke to her during our June Women in COG event about her unique experiences, before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
For our April Women in COG event, the team hosted a discussion with Dr Senjuti Saha, a molecular microbiologist who is currently Director at the Child Health Research Foundation (CHRF) in Bangladesh – and also the country’s foremost researcher in the genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2.
To celebrate International Women’s Day on 8th March, COG-UK hosted a panel discussion with Colby Benari, CEO of In2scienceUK, and Phoebe Reynolds – an alumnus, and now trustee, of their programme. The panel was chaired by Angela Beckett, a Specialist Research Technician at the University of Portsmouth, who helped to establish and maintain the university’s COG-UK sequencing site.
To kick off Women in COG in 2022, we speak to Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, COVID-19 Technical Lead at the World Health Organization (WHO), about the inspiration that led her to a career in epidemiology, applying a leadership mindset to everything we do, and balancing an ambitious career and family life.
In the final instalment of our Women in COG series for 2021, Professor Sharon Peacock, Executive Director and Chair of COG-UK, and Sir Jeremy Farrar, Director of the Wellcome Trust, discussed why diversity and inclusion must return to the top of the agenda.
In the latest instalment of our Women in COG series, we caught up with Dr June Raine, Chief Executive of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, to learn more about her experiences during the pandemic and as a woman in science.
In the latest instalment of our Women in COG series, we caught up with Magdalena Skipper – Editor in Chief of Nature
In the latest instalment of our Women in COG series, we caught up with Angela Douglas – Deputy Chief Scientific Officer for NHS England and NHS Improvement.
In the latest instalment of our Women in COG series, we caught up with Judy Breuer – Professor of Virology at University College London, and COG-UK Principal Investigator and Chief Investigator of the Hospital Onset COVID-19 Infections (HOCI) study
In the first instalment of our Women in COG series, we caught up with Charlotte Summers – a Reader in Intensive Care Medicine at the University of Cambridge who practices clinically at Cambridge University Hospital.
To celebrate International Women’s Day, we highlight some of the many women whose work has been vital to the consortium’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
