A number of prizes have been awarded to early career researchers and PhD students in our Bright Sparks in Immunology session at BSI Congress.
Bright Sparks in Immunology
Congratulations to the winners of our Bright Sparks sessions at the British Society for Immunology Congress 2023. This event aims to showcase the work of early career researchers as well as providing them with valuable experience talking about their work in front of a large audience. The 2023 winners are:
PhD category
- First place: Luc Francis, King's College London, UK – Using single-cell transcriptomics to characterise early mechanisms of biologic-induced psoriasis resolution
- Second place: Rachel Coulombeau, Imperial College London, UK – S1P signalling inhibition suppresses Th1-like Treg generation by rewiring mitochondrial metabolism
- Third place: Nicole Ong, University of Dundee, UK – Mast cell IL-33 signalling in intestinal helminth infection
Postdoc category
- First place: Dr Matthew Sinton, University of Manchester, UK – IL-17 signalling is critical for controlling subcutaneous adipose tissue dynamics and parasite burden during chronic Trypanosoma brucei infection
- Second place: Dr Karen Slattery, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland – Lipids drive NK cell metabolic dysfunction in metastatic ovarian cancer patients
- Third place: Dr Julio Furlong-Silva, University of Exeter, UK – Mgl2+ cDC2 driven anti-fungal allergic inflammatory responses is highly dependent on a glycolytic switch, orchestrated by both spore uptake and the lung environment
Poster prizes
Congratulations to the winners of the BSI Congress 2023 poster prizes, whose work was selected from 600 posters presented at the conference.
The BSI's official journals Clinical & Experimental Immunology, Immunotherapy Advances and Discovery Immunology were proud to sponsor 4 poster prizes. On behalf of all the editors, we extend our congratulations to the following winners:
- Dr Anna Andrusaite, University of Glasgow, UK – H. polygyrus skews cDC2 development towards regulatory CD103+ phenotype to counter the anti-helminth immune response
- Gearóid Conlon, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland – Glutamine uptake and metabolism is essential for cytokine-induced natural killer cell metabolic reprogramming and enhanced effector function
- Katie Flaherty, King's College London, UK – The influence of co-stimulatory domains on the metabolic regulation of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell function
- Dr Isobel Mouat, University of Edinburgh Centre for Inflammation Research, UK – Stroke results in chronic B cell deficits and infection vulnerability
We would also like to thank the Federation of Clinical Immunological Societies (FOCIS) for kindly sponsoring one of our poster prizes. Together with FOCIS, we congratulate:
- Xiawei Zhang, University of Oxford, UK – MAIT cells protect against sterile lung injury
Lastly, we would like to thank Disease Models & Mechanisms (DMM) an official journal of The Company of Biologists for kindly sponsoring one of our poster prizes.
Together with DMM, we congratulate:
- Dr Sarwah Al-Khalidi, Beatson Institute for Cancer Research, UK – Grab your partners: Tumour derived cDC are left alone on the dancefloor