There are a number of prizes available at the British Society for Immunology virtual conference ‘Connecting immunology in the time of COVID-19’, which took place on Tuesday 1 December and Wednesday 2 December 2020, to award excellence for oral and poster presentations. Our congratulations to all the winners listed below.
Bright Sparks
Congratulations to the winners of our Bright Sparks sessions at the British Society for Immunology virtual conference. The 2020 Bright Sparks event took place on the first morning of the conference as an integral part of the programme. This initiative aims to showcase the research of early-career researchers as well as providing them with the experience of giving talks about their work to a large audience.
PhD category
- Winner: Caitlin McManus, University of Glasgow - Heterogeneity of Tregs in helminth infection
- Highly commended: Lucy MacDonald, Research into Inflammatory Arthritis Centre Versus Arthritis (RACE), University of Glasgow - COVID-19 and rheumatoid arthritis share myeloid pathogenic and resolving pathways
Postdoc category
- Winner: Leanne Bradley, University of Edinburgh - Glioblastoma stem cells hijack myeloid-affiliated transcription factors via epigenetic immunoediting to elicit immune evasion
- Highly commended: Stefan Szymkowiak, University of Edinburgh - TREM2 promotes microglial reprogramming and resilience to subcortical white matter disease in a model of vascular cognitive impairment
We would also like to congratulate all the early career researchers who presented in our Bright Sparks sessions this year and made them so engaging and informative. We were privileged to hear about their work.
Poster prizes
Our congratulations to the following winners of the BSI virtual conference poster prizes.
- First prize: Nikhil Faulkner, Francis Crick Institute/Imperial College London - Pre-existing antibodies to endemic human coronaviruses cross-react with pandemic SARS-CoV-2 spike and exhibit specific neutralising activity against SARS-CoV-2 in vitro
- Runner-up: Robert Watson, University of Oxford - Immune Checkpoint Blockade differentially affects CD8+ T-cells as a function of their phenotype and clonal size
The Society’s three official journals, Clinical & Experimental Immunology, Immunology, and Immunotherapy Advances, are proud to sponsor these poster prizes. You can read the abstracts for all posters presented on the conference website.