Dear colleague,

Welcome to the Annual Meeting of the Dutch Society for Human Genetics. This year is unique. Obviously, many of us have experienced the consequences of the COVID-19 related ‘intelligent lockdown’, either in the hospital or at home. Also for us, it soon became clear that there would only be a very small chance to host a live conference on 17 and 18 September 2020. We therefore decided to take the challenge of organising it as a virtual meeting. We are excited to relish this challenge, and we hope you are excited to join us.

This year is also unique because the NVHG celebrates 70 years of Human Genetics in the Netherlands. In 1949, genetics pioneers Bruins and Waardenburg founded the Nederlandse Anthropogenetische Vereniging, which we know today as the Dutch Society of Human Genetics (NVHG). Their vision: the Netherlands as frontrunner in objective and ideology-free human genetics research. In 70 years’ time, Dutch Human Genetics has become exceptional as a driving technology for health-related research, and as an established health care service.

To celebrate our 70th anniversary, we invite you to join our first digital conference. We are indebted to speakers for accepting our invitation. We are proud to announce that Han Brunner has been elected to present the Galjaard Lecture “Understanding Intellectual Disability”. Sir John Burn will present recent insights in the genetic background and opportunities for intervention of Lynch syndrome. Marion Koopmans en Andre Uitterlinden will update us on the genetic susceptibility and disease characteristics of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In the afternoon, we have a live panel discussion from our studio with Eef Grob and Sam Riedijk on the challenges associated with the implementation of gene editing. Using the digital communication options in our online platform, we also very much invite you to join the debate.
This year we will introduce a new interactive session: “Hot and Happening” where latest contributions to human genetics will be presented by Anneke Lucassen, Janneke Langedonk and Kees Harteveld. Lili Milani will finish the scientific part of this year’s meeting with an update on Biobanking and Genomics infrastructure.

Finally, we have a social event combined with our ALV. Make sure to be present to have a chance to win an Ipad mini!

We would like to thank the sponsors, for their essential and generous financial contribution to the organization of the meeting and thank all the members for their active participation.

I wish you a very inspiring meeting!