As the year draws to a close, we’d like to reflect upon another successful year for the British Society for Immunology (BSI). 2024 has been a busy year and has seen us offer many exciting opportunities for our immunology community including our committee elections, new training courses and first ever Immune Therapies Summit. We hope to continue this momentum in 2025 and are looking forward to building upon our work and continuing to deliver for our members. Below are some stand out moments from this past year...
At the start of this year we kicked off our BSI committee elections with a record number of positions up for election, including those within the BSI Clinical Immunology Professional Network Steering Group. We were thrilled to be able to fill the available positions with candidates who represent the breadth of our membership. We also had a fantastic voter turnout of almost 14%! We are looking forward to continuing to work with our committee members to drive forward the Society's mission to support the immunology community, promote scientific discovery and make a positive impact on health.
In January, we had the opportunity to respond to the recent rise in measles cases in England and encourage vaccination. Our CEO, Doug Brown, was featured in The Guardian and The Sun highlighting the importance of vaccines and how it is "never too late" to choose vaccination and protect yourself and your loved ones. One of our main aims as a society is ensuring that we contribute to a strong voice for immunology on the world stage and so it is always important for us to feed in to situations like this.
March was a busy month for us celebrating both International Women’s Day and Vaccine Engagement Day. For International Women’s Day we showcased the inspiring women from across our BSI committees. We asked them questions about their careers, why gender equity matters to them and asked them to share any advice they have for women starting their career journey. It was wonderful to have the opportunity to champion BSI women in immunology during this campaign and we look forward to doing something similar next year.
For vaccine engagement day, we hosted a social media engagement campaign where we encouraged BSI members to share their expert voices in #VaccineConversations; this year we focused on maintaining the dialogue around childhood vaccines. Our members and the wider research community are ideally placed to be expert sources of knowledge in these conversations. Building on the success of previous years, we wanted to give immunologists the opportunity to engage with the public around childhood vaccines by listening to and addressing common questions and concerns. It was fantastic to see so many of our members engaging with this campaign across social media!
In July our open access journal Immunotherapy Advances was given its first ever impact factor! We were thrilled with a score of 4.1 which established it as a leading publication in the field of immunology. This was particularly impressive for this journal as it is still in its early stages, and we would like to thank everyone who has been involved in its continued success.
Lastly, it’s been a fantastic year for our membership magazine, Immunology News. We have heard fantastic stories from across the BSI and have enjoyed sharing these with all of you. You can rest assured that 2025 will again be packed with more exciting editions and news from across the world of immunology!
None of these achievements over the past year would have been possible without our wonderful members. We’re incredibly grateful to you all for your ongoing help and support! We would like to wish all of you a Happy Holidays and a peaceful New Year from all of us at the British Society for Immunology.
