I would like to sincerely thank AEpiA, and particularly the ECR committee, for awarding me an ECR Travel Award, which supported my attendance to the 2023 Australian Bioinformatics And Computational Biology Society (ABACBS) conference in Brisbane. This conference provided fantastic insights into cutting edge bioinformatic techniques with relevance to epigenetics, including methods of machine learning, deep learning, and their application in various settings, such as the identification of context-specific enhancers. I was particularly amazed by recent efforts to integrate genome-wide association studies with epigenetics and other -omics data to refine prioritisation of candidate genes associated with complex traits. It is my hope that these methods will greatly enhance the clinical translation of personalised epigenetic data in future work.

As part of this conference, I was able to present my recent meta-analysis of variably methylated loci in schizophrenia, with a view of exploring epigenetic determinants of phenotypic heterogeneity in this disorder. I am pleased to report that my work attracted substantial interest from other attendees, and I received an extensive feedback, advice and criticisms which will greatly assist with refinement and publication of this current project. Furthermore, I was able to develop new interdisciplinary collaborations that will be critical for further exploration of epigenetic mechanisms in psychiatric illness and expanding these analyses to other complex disorders. Overall, I am incredibly grateful for this opportunity and look forward to sharing insights from ABACBS at the next AEpiA conference.