The European Society of Human Genetics (ESHG) held its yearly conference 16-19 June 2018 in Milan, Italy. Eleonora Porcu received the Young Investigator Award for the best talk in statistical genetics (Lodewijk Sandkuijl Award) on top of her Fellowship of Excellence for Young Investigators. She presented her work on Mendelian randomisation integrating eQTL and GWAS of common traits to reveal new biological insight into the transcriptome architecture of complex diseases. Her talk was entitled Mendelian randomization combining GWAS and eQTL data reveals new loci, extensive pleiotropy and genetic determinants of complex and clinical traits.