Please join us for a day of trainee talks, faculty speakers, poster presentations, lunch, social and more!!!

Guest Speaker: Kym M Boycott
Senior Scientist, CHEO Research Institute

Kym Boycott is a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Ottawa in Canada, where she is a Clinical Geneticist at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO), Chair of the Department of Genetics, and a Senior Scientist at the CHEO Research Institute. Dr. Boycott is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Rare Disease Precision Health whose research program bridges clinical genomics to basic research and is focused on understanding the molecular pathogenesis of rare diseases to improve patient care and family well-being. She leads the national Care4Rare Canada Consortium integrating genomic and other –omic technologies to improve our understanding of rare disease, with a particular focus on solving the unsolved and most difficult rare diseases. To leverage these discoveries, she co-leads the Canadian Rare Diseases: Models & Mechanisms Network, established to catalyze connections between newly discovered rare disease genes and basic scientists who can rapidly study them in model systems. Globally, she moves the rare disease agenda forward as part of the Global Commission to End the Diagnostic Odyssey for Children.

Faculty Speaker: Francesca Capon
Department of Medical Genetics, Senior Scientist, Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics (CMMT)

Francesca Capon obtained a BSc in biological sciences (1992) and PhD in medical genetics (1999) from La Sapienza, University of Rome, Italy. Her interest in the genetics of psoriasis brought her to the United Kingdom. She first moved to the University of Leicester as a Wellcome Trust Traveling Research Fellow (2001), then took on a Lectureship in human molecular genetics at University College London (2004). She joined King’s College London in 2006 as a lecturer, was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2014, and to Reader (Associate Professor) in 2018. In 2022, she was elected to Professor at King’s College London. Her main research interest is the genetic basis of psoriasis. In recent years, the Capon Lab has been concentrating on two main research lines: the identification of disease genes in pustular forms of psoriasis and the role of interleukin-36 in the pathogenesis of pustular and plaque psoriasis. This research has been published in high-impact journals including the American Journal of Human Genetics, the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, and Science Translational Medicine.