Our legacy
Creating a diverse community and hosting accessible, open-access events
Serving the life science community
At ELRIG, we host scientific events that connect thousands of people across the life science industry. We bring our community of researchers, tool providers, entrepreneurs and early career professionals together so they can better support each other. But our purpose goes beyond this.
We’re putting our community at the core of how we plan our events to govern ourselves and guide the next generation of scientists. Our legacy is investing back into you. Making sure everyone has access to high-quality science.
How it started
In 2020, a review of our speaker line-ups revealed a clear issue: most invited speakers were white, middle-aged men. This didn’t reflect the reality of our community, which we surveyed throughout our 2021 events. Collecting demographic information from nearly 4,000 delegates, we found that:
43% identified as women
27% as non-white
3% reported a disability
30% were Early Career Professionals (ECPs)
We realised that we needed to focus more on diversity among our speakers. We called on our community to help us and were overwhelmed by the support we received. Together, we created the ELRIG Community’s Guiding Principles and began to shape a future we wanted to see across the industry.
ELRIG Community’s Guiding Principles
Rather than write a static policy, we developed a set of community-led Guiding Principles that embed inclusion into our operations, not just our intentions.
These principles guide everything from our governance to speaker selection and inform the work of all eight volunteer-led Work Groups.
Equality
- We actively monitor who participates in our events by age, gender, ethnicity, disability and career stage.
- We intervene where needed to ensure no group is favoured or excluded.
- We seek equal access and equal outcomes across the ELRIG community.
Diversity
- We aim for the diversity of our delegates, speakers, and scientific content to represent the diversity of the community.
- Speaker line-ups should be diverse in gender, ethnicity and career stage because our field isn’t homogenous.
Inclusion
- We remove barriers wherever possible.
From financial, geographical, caring responsibilities, religious needs, disabilities (visible and invisible), and more. - We will ensure that accessibility is maximised at all events.
- We commit to listening to feedback and acting on it—before, during, and after every event.
To put our principles into action, we set measurable targets for our invited speakers:
%
Gender balance split
%
Early Career Professionals
%
Non-white
Since putting our Guiding Principles together, we’ve made real progress. Gender balance and ECP representation in our speaker line-ups have steadily improved, meeting our targets across many events. To address this, we partnered with the Black Medical & Scientific Network and Afro-Caribbean Commercial Science Network to support speaker recruitment. This increased visibility but highlighted how much further we need to go.
We also acknowledge that only 3% of our delegates reported having a disability. This number seems disproportionately low, and we’re working to better understand and address the barriers – visible and invisible – that may be preventing participation.
In 2024 we surveyed almost 6,000 delegates across all of our events so we could compare the progress we made on our initial goal of having a diverse and inclusive event agenda.
Delegate vs speaker ethnicity
Delegate vs speaker gender
Gender balance is one area where sustained, deliberate action is making a real difference. We’ve maintained a near-equal gender balance between delegates and speakers in 2024, which is encouraging and consistent with our targets. However, we are still investigating ways to improve our speaker lineup to be more inclusive and representative of our community.
A new challenge
Some delegates and speakers choose not to share their demographic information when registering for ELRIG events. While this section is not mandatory, and we fully respect the choice to opt out, we ask because these details help us measure where progress is being made and where more work is needed.
Through new, ongoing communication, we hope to build trust with our delegates by being transparent about how their EDI data is used to track progress, identify gaps, and make targeted, deliberate changes. It’s about collective improvement at ELRIG, but across the life science industry.
Breaking barriers beyond the stage
Many of our legacy initiatives go beyond our main stage to support the next generation of scientists and innovators.
Big Adventures in Tiny Labcoats
We’re planting the seeds for future innovators, entrepreneurs and scientists. Every year at our Drug Discovery conferences, we invite local schools to experience science in the real world. With hands-on experiments, Q&A sessions for those burning questions and awards. Making sure the next generation sees science as something exciting and achievable.
ELRIG Breakthrough Zone
Early Career Professional Awards
The innovative contributions of new scientists are what enable our industry to keep advancing. To uplift the incredible and often under-recognised work of Early Career Professionals (ECPs) we’ve created 2 awards:
Kirsty Smitten Award: recognising impact in the workplace
Best ECP Poster Award: recognising ECP research advancing the industry
Travel Bursary
Access to great science and exposure to new ideas shouldn’t be limited by geography. Our new travel bursary welcomes university departments and research institutions from areas around the UK to attend selected ELRIG events. Without the burden of transportation costs!
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