Highlights from the 55th Annual Meeting of the EMGS

We had a wonderful time at the 55^th Annual Meeting of the EMGS in Palm Springs, September 7-11, 2024. This year’s meeting featured four keynote lectures, four platform sessions, and twelve symposia. Our keynote speakers were Dr. Philip C. Hanawalt, Dr. Wei Yang, Dr. Ting Wang, and Dr. Qi Chen.

We had two award lectures “Seeing is Believing: Creating and Leveraging Technologies for Insights into Environmental Health,” by our 2024 Hollaender Award winner, Dr. Bevin Engelward, and “Maintaining genome stability in mitotic and post-mitotic cells,” by our 2024 EMGS Award winner, Dr. Andre Nussenzweig.

Our 2024 Samuel H. Wilson Award for Studies on DNA Repair winner, Dr. Aishwarya Prakash, was featured in Platform one, where she gave her presentation, “Gene-Environment Synergisms and Their Role in Cancer.”

During our opening reception, the 2024 EMGS Education Award was presented to Dr. David Eastmond in recognition his of long-standing dedication to educating and mentoring the future generation of scientists in the field of environmental mutagenesis.

At our Awards Banquet, the 2024 EMGS Service Award was given to Dr. Francesco Marchetti in recognition of his longstanding dedication and service to the EMGS. Additionally, the EMGS conferred several awards to students and early career investigators (SECI), including fifty-nine travel awards, to support SECI attendance and participation in the Annual Meeting, our EMM Best Paper Awards, recognizing an outstanding manuscript authored primarily by a SECI and published in EMM in the past year, and the Best Poster Awards, which were judged live during the poster sessions!

The winners of the 2024 EMM Manuscript Awards were:

Best Student Paper
Hannah Wilson for their paper "Genome-wide impact of cytosine methylation and DNA sequence context on UV-induced CPD formation".

Best Early Career Investigator Paper
Claudia I. Almendarez-Reyna for their paper "The aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) activation mediates Benzo(a)pyrene-induced overexpression of AQP3 and Notch1 in HaCaT cells".

The 2024 Student and Early Career Investigator Poster Award winners were:

Best Overall DNA repair SECI poster (sponsored by the journal DNA Repair)
Sean Cone for their poster “Environmental Circadian Disruption Exacerbates UVB-induced DNA Damage and Skin Carcinogenesis in SKH-1 Hairless Mice”.

Best Overall Basic or Applied SECI poster (sponsored by Mutation Research: Fundamental and Molecular Mechanisms of Mutagenesis)
Hailey Levi for their poster “Dihydroxyacetone Exposures Induce Genotoxicity and Metabolic Reprogramming in Cardiac Myocytes”.

Best Student poster (sponsored by Mutation Research Genetic Toxicology and Environmental Mutagenesis)
First Place: Rashmi Shakti for their poster “Setting Intervention Priorities for Potential Breast Carcinogens by Integrating Biological Evidence for Harm with Exposure Risks”.
Second Place: Elena Esina for their poster, “Power Analyses to Inform Duplex Sequencing Study Designs for MutaMouse Liver and Bone Marrow”.

Best Early Career Investigator poster sponsored by Mutation Research Reviews
First Place: Alexandra Berroyer for their poster “Chemotherapeutic G-Quadruplex DNA-stabilizer CX-5461 is a Nucleotide Excision Repair Inhibitor”.
Second Place: Kaveri Goel for their poster “Upregulated UNG1 Affects Genomic Stability and Mediates Metabolic Reprogramming in Prostate Cancer”.

The winners of the Best Student and Early Career Investigator Oral Presentation Awards, announced on September 24^th, were:

Best Student Oral Presentation
First Place: Joseph Butler for their presentation “Optimized Machine Learning Methods Permit the Discovery of an Environmental Component of Genomic Signatures Associated With Radioresistant Microbes”.
Second Place: Garrett Driscoll for their presentation “The Function and Mechanism of APE2 in Responding to DNA Damage Within Mitochondria”.

Best Early Career Investigator Oral Presentation
First Place: Mathia Colwell for their presentation “Effects of 5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine on DNA Methylation within Female Mouse Reproductive Tissues”.
Second Place: Justin Ling for their presentation “Consequences of Ribonucleotides in Telomeres”.

The 56th Annual Meeting of the EMGS: Genomic Health Innovations, Perspectives, and Progress Bloom in the Flower City will be held in Rochester, New York, September 6-110, 2025! We hope we see you there!