Westmead Dermatology 
By: Rachel Teh
Celebrating its 25th birthday, the Annual Lorne Proteomics Symposium was held last week from the 6th to the 9th of February. This was the first proteomics conference that I had been to and it was absolutely fantastic.
Ali and I decided to take the scenic route and drive 8 hours to the 1st Australasian Data Visualisation and Bioinformatics Symposium (ADVBS) pre-Lorne 2 day workshop held at the University of Melbourne. This workshop comprised of experts teaching us how to use the statistical programming language R and how we can use it with our proteomic data. The workshop also had a special guest speaker Mr Martin Kryzwinski. Mr Krzywinski who specialises in bioinformatics and data visualisation gave us a whole new perspective in how we present our data and how we really need to be thinking about the gestalt rather than following what has traditionally be done before. I, for one, found Mr Kryzwinski delightful and refreshing and yet intimidating as I thought over how my poster, already printed, would now appear. Overall, props to the ADVBS Organisation Committee for running a very informative and engaging workshop. I look forward to using the knowledge gained in my upcoming data analysis.
Onward to Lorne, another scenic 2 hour drive along Great Ocean Road. Although the sun decided to take a break behind the clouds, Lorne was still beautiful. The conference started in the late afternoon with some great talks on the current projects of invited speakers and students. Over the course of the conference, we found new techniques and software programs that could be used to simplify our data analysis and we initiated potential collaborations with vendors to push forward some ideas as well as improve our current projects. The atmosphere of the conference and its attendees were friendly and very welcoming for a newbie like me, there was encouragement and enthusiasm in the project I presented via poster. Overall, this conference has been very inspiring and I look forward to getting through my next experiment to present at the next proteomics conference whether it’d be in Sweden for the big HUPO international proteomics conference in October this year or next years 26th Annual Lorne Proteomics Symposium.
We just wanted to say thank you to the beautiful town of Lorne and the organiser’s of this great symposium for having us.
