Postponement of IVVN annual conference

As registered delegates have already been informed, we have made the difficult decision to postpone our annual conference, which was due to take place next month in Hanoi, Vietnam. Uncertainty over the ongoing COVID-19 meant that we could not proceed with the conference in March while fulfilling our obligation to prioritise the health and safety of our delegates.

The conference has been rescheduled and will be hosted on 12-14th October 2020 in the Melia hotel, Hanoi, Vietnam. Please hold these dates in your diary and we will inform members when registration opens.

IVVN Fellowship Programme

We are very proud to announce a new fellowship programme for female scientists from low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs), funded by the IVVN and Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC).

Women are under-represented in science globally, and especially so in LMICs. According to data from the International Food Policy Research Institute, only 27% of researchers in LMICs are female.

As you will have heard in previous newsletters, our African Schools Outreach Programme, which launched last year, seeks to encourage more girls to take an interest in science from a young age. However, another problem is the lack of female representation at senior levels, with many women leaving science during their postdoctoral years.

In our last members' survey, a lack of mentorship opportunities was identified as a research barrier by many of our female members in LMICs. We hope this new fellowship programme will help to address this issue.

Successful applicants will receive funding to undertake a research project to address a key bottleneck to vaccine development. They will also be mentored by established scientists based outside their own countries, who will provide advice, broaden fellows' networks, and share experiences.

Find out more about the new fellowships here.

Members' survey

The IVVN Fellowship Progamme is just one of the outcomes of our last members' survey. Now, we are launching our second members' survey, which will help shape the future of the network. We want to find out more about what you think of the network, what are the challenges facing your research, and how we could improve what we offer our members. Members should check the email preceding this newsletter – or contact us for a link if you're reading this online.

New website filtering functions

Many of you have already updated your IVVN member profiles with the new expertise filters we told you about last month. Those of you who haven't can do so by logging in to the website, clicking the 'Edit' button on your profile and select the options that are relevant to your research or area of work. And if you can't see what you're working on listed as an option, please let us know, and we'll add it in.

Once enough members have added this information to their profiles, you will be able to search the database by career stage, scientific discipine, host species, pathogen and the stage of vaccine development members are involved in. We hope this will help members find new collaborators for future projects - one of the barriers to research we identified in the 2018 members' survey.

Call for blogs

We are currently looking for research institutes and projects, especially in low- and middle-income countries, to feature on our blog. This is a great opportunity to let more people know about the research that goes on at your institute and find potential new collaborators. If you would like to hear more about what we're looking for, get in touch.

Articles and publications

Events

Frontiers in comparative immunology series: T cell biology - Abstract deadline extended to 6 March!

The Comparative Veterinary Immunology Group (CVIG) of the British Society for Immunology (BSI) are hosting a meeting on T cell biology on 2-3 April 2020 in Edinburgh, UK. For more information, please click here. 

Symposium: Starve the livestock pathogen, feed the world
This one day session, as part of the Microbiology Society's annual conference, will take place on 2 April 2020 in Edinburgh, UK. The session will focus on neglected livestock diseases that have a large economic impact on poor livestock keepers in Africa and South Asia. Register here by 27 March 2020. 

Avian immunology flow cytometry workshop
The first Avian Immunology Flow Cytometry Workshop will be held by the British Society for Immunology's Comparative & Veterinary Immunology Group (CVIG). It will take place immediately after CVIG's T cell biology meeting on the afternoon of Friday 3 April 2020 in Edinburgh. Register here.

VALIDATE Network Immunometabolism Workshop 2020
This workshop is aimed at all researchers who would like to know more about immunometabolism and the techniques used to address the interplay between metabolism and cell function. Find out more here.

Job Vacancies

Research Fellow, Roslin Institute, Edinburgh, UK (£33,797-£40,322, fixed term to December 2021)

The Roslin Institute is seeking to recruit a senior research assistant to join the group of Dr Timothy Connelley. The group has a number of projects looking at immunological responses and vaccine development in livestock species. Apply by 23 March 2020. Find out more here.

Postdoctoral Fellow – African Swine Fever, VIDO-InterVac, Saskatoon, Canada

The Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization-International Vaccine Centre (VIDO-InterVac), a research institute at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada, is seeking to appoint postdoctoral fellows to work on African swine fever. Apply by 31 March 2020. Find out more here.

Funding