The UK’s first academic conference for black cancer researchers is an important step towards improving chronically low numbers of ethnic minority scientists, its organisers say.
This week Cancer Research UK (CRUK) will host the inaugural Black in Cancer conference at the Science Museum in London, welcoming leading black cancer doctors, researchers and patient advocates from across the world, in what is believed to the first of its kind for a science conference in the UK.
“It’s definitely challenging the norm – I am usually the only black person in the room at the scientific conferences I attend,” explained Tanimola Martins, research fellow at the University of Exeter Medical School, and a board member of Black in Cancer, the grassroots group started by University of Cambridge PhD student Sigourney Bonner in 2020.
