Twins Research Australia staffing changes 

Twins Research Australia would like to say good bye and thank you to manager and long-time staff member, Jenny Boadle. Many of you will have spoken to and worked with Jenny over the past 15 years and will appreciate her significant and lasting contribution to TRA. We wish her all the best in her new role at The Australian Institute of Family Studies as Manager of Knowledge Translation and Impact and look forward to continuing to work with her in this new capacity.

We are currently advertising for a Manger at Twins Research Australia within the University of Melbourne’s School of Population and Global Health. You can find more information about the role here. Please circulate this within your networks and feel free to contact Kate Murphy with any enquiries the position at +61 3 9035 4625 or murphyks@unimelb.edu.au.
Applications close:  12 Mar 2019 11:55 PM

Congratulations to Paul Lancaster and David Whiteman 

We would like to congratulate Paul Lancaster and David Whiteman (former board members of TRA) for receiving Australia Day awards this year.

• Paul Lancaster received these honours for significant service to community health, particularly to perinatal and paediatric medicine.
• David Whiteman received these honours for significant service to medical research in the field of cancer epidemiology.

Workshops and conferences

Introduction to Statistical Analysis of Data from Twins – Sydney 
When: June
There is more information to come however you can register your interest now by emailing Janine Lam at janine.lam@unimelb.edu.au. 

Twins Research Australia travel grant scheme - Round 19 

Twins Research Australia will hold a round of travel grants April 1-30. 

Twins Research Australia’s Travel Grant Scheme aims to encourage the growth and development of twin research in Australia, to benefit the whole population, by:

• Supporting the training and development of Australian researchers in the methodology and practice of studies involving twins by offering financial assistance to attend TRA workshops and events.
• Presenting and promoting TRA based twin research studies at scientific conferences.

Application details to be released on Twins Research Australia’s website and via email.

Conversations in twin research 

Twins Research Australia has launched an online series of occasional papers, Conversations in Twin Research, to showcase the diverse application of the twin method to the research and health professionals’ community. The series aims to encourage a conversation regarding use of this approach in all areas of research, including education, early life origins of chronic disease, clinical trials and population health resources.

Our first ‘conversation’ is with John Hopper and Katrina Scurrah on the topic, Twin Research: Designs and Analytic Approaches. John and Katrina summarise the different types of study designs involving twins and the ways in which these can be used to address different specific research questions. They describe the advantages and limitations of the various designs, highlight some issues of which researchers should be aware when using them, and discuss some controversies. If you have any comments or questions, please go to our Facebook Twin Researcher and Stats Group here.

Twin related grant applications

Have you submitted a recent grant that involves twins or twin data? If you have, we would like to know so we can ensure our resources are in place and that our twin members are informed of how their contributions are having an ongoing impact on the generation of research ideas.  Please let us know by emailing info@twins.org.au.

ISTS Twin Registries’ Networking Meeting in Budapest

The ISTS Twin Registries’ Networking Meeting 
When: 15 and 16 April, 2019
Where: Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary.

The scope of the meeting will include building new international collaborations in twin research and provide networking possibilities among researchers. The meeting welcomes representatives of both new and established twin registries and will offer a unique opportunity for researchers to share challenges, tips and tricks on maintaining their invaluable twin registries. For example, novel epigenetic twin studies, which require larger sample sizes, especially when studying twins suffering from rare diseases and collaboration across countries is therefore of great importance. The meeting will consist of networking workshops on various topics, in which researchers can provide their already available twin data and/or being interested in future data collection for international collaboration. The aim of the meeting is to provide a foundation for collaborations with the intention to further develop these collaborations during meetings at the ISTS 2019 congress in Hong Kong (29 to 30 November, 2019).

For more information please email lucas.cf@unimelb.edu.au.

Recent Publications

Journal articles

• Contributions of birthweight, annualised weight gain and BMI to back pain in adults: a population-based co-twin control study of 2754 Australian twins. -  European Spine Journal.
• Molecular Support for Heterogonesis Resulting in Sesquizygotic Twinning -  New England Journal of Medicine.

Media releases:

• Semi-identical twins identified in pregnancy for first time - The University of NSW.

Do you have upcoming research to be published?

Just a reminder that when referring to Twins Research Australia during the course of your research please ensure you use our new name and logo. Also, a gentle reminder to use the following wording when acknowledging Twins Research Australia in your publications:

“This research was facilitated through access to Twins Research Australia, a national resource supported by a Centre of Research Excellence Grant (ID: 1079102), from the National Health and Medical Research Council.”

An electronic copy of all publications should be sent to info@twins.org.au.