A Brief History of the Queenstown Molecular Biology Meeting Society

The first QMB meeting was organised in 1991. The idea of a New Zealand meeting dedicated to Molecular Biology was fostered by Dick Bellamy, Barry Scott and Jim Watson and organised by a groups from Auckland University and DSIR Mt. Albert to satisfy an unmet need for high level molecular bioscience meeting in New Zealand.

Queenstown was chosen as a suitable venue and the winter university vacation was chosen as a suitable time to attract as many participants as possible and also being a great time of year for foreign visitors to come to Queenstown.

The first meeting was held in the draughty car museum below the Queenstown gondola with speakers having to shout to be heard over the roar of the massive gas heaters that were there to keep everyone from developing frostbite. It was a great meeting and while later meetings have been held in more appropriate venues, this first meeting set the tone for the years to come by combining agricultural, horticultural and biomedical scientists in a warm and friendly atmosphere with molecular biology as its focus.

The first meeting was strongly supported by Life Technologies who made a substantial donation and they have remained a loyal support of the meeting even after they became InvitrogenTM.

The meeting has continued every year since, now under the official umbrella of the Queenstown Molecular Biology Meeting Society, a not for profit society specifically set up to run the meeting. Each year a "volunteer" is selected from the small pool of senior molecular biologists in New Zealand and this person becomes the organizer of the following years meeting.

Previous meeting conveners

1993 Tony Robinson
1994 Dick Wilkins
1995 John Fraser
1996 Martin Kennedy
1997 Mike Berridge
1998 Paul Reynolds
1999 James Kalmakoff
2000 Jo Putterill
2001 Dick Wilkins
2002 Jane Lancaster
2003 Warwick Grant
2004 Julian Eaton-Rye
2005 Peter Shepherd/Paul Rainey
2006 Jerry Hyams

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