EFI 2019 - A Conference Ruled by Science and Siesta

The EFI Meeting held in Lisbon, Portugal was a compact three days during which Omixon ran a number of successful events and spent a significant amount of time connecting with existing and new customers. Although Belém/Lisbon is a beautiful tourist destination in its own right, the weather was rainy for the duration of the conference – attendees seemed to enjoy being in the meeting rooms and in the exhibition area much more than last time in sunny Venice.

Day 0 of the conference started with our Distributor Workshop, followed by an interactive User Group Meeting (a.k.a. “Scientific Siesta”) which was a forum where participants could learn about Omixon’s products, interact with current users and network with NGS and HLA experts. Four guest speakers, Dr. Valia Bravo-Egana, Dr. Mette Christiansen, Dr. Monica Dutescu and Dr. Dominique Masson shared their valuable experiences with the attendees. This gave participants the opportunity to hear and discuss current Holotype HLA users’ experiences, learn from their challenges and celebrate the successes. Thank you for sharing your feedback and being interactive throughout the event, this means a lot to us!

On Day 1 we had our Lunchtime Symposium, titled “Advances in Disease Associations Using NGS-based HLA Typing”, which attracted more than 120 professionals. The symposium presentation focused on the science of HLA and disease associations with Professor Mehdi Tafti from University of Lausanne in Switzerland speaking about Narcolepsy and Dr. Mohamed Jahromi from Dasman Diabetes Institute in Kuwait who presented on how NGS-based HLA typing has aided his research on Type 1 Diabetes. Omixon’s Head of Product, Efi Melista, concluded the session with updates about Omixon’s product pipeline for the remainder of 2019 and automation options for Holotype HLA across a range of liquid handlers, including the recent collaboration with Eppendorf to automate on the EpMotion 5075t.

The cherry on the top was the Annual Omixon Party, held at the À Margem terrace bar by the bank of the River Tagus. We didn’t really set a “theme” for this year, rather just decorated the place with bright orange flower garlands, Omixon hats and leaves/flowers in different colors to get into the mediterranean mood, even on a cloudy evening. Guests were invited to play a game and find their “match” – they had to find their pair with the same word written on the wristbands provided by our team to receive a gift from us. This game was definitely one of the best ideas we’ve had so far, as people were excited to find their match and started networking immediately. The evening resulted in a big party as always – thank you all for joining us!

Day 2 (and day 1 too) was busy with live HLA Twin software demos at our booth – our Field Application Scientists, Nina, Vera and Libor were busy giving information about our HLA Twin software.

To sum up the conference, here are some highlights in pictures….