10th Annual Edinburgh Infectious Diseases Symposium - Keeping Connected
We are delighted that we will be hosting our annual symposium on Wednesday 24 June 2021. Registration is now open!
This is our 10th annual event, and as always will celebrate some of the best infectious disease research from across Edinburgh.
Due to the ongoing pandemic, this event will be held online, but we hope that you will join us and keep connected with others across the Edinburgh Infectious Diseases community.
Ker Memorial Lecture
We are very pleased that the Ker Memorial Lecture will be given by Prof Stewart Cole, the President of the Institut Pasteur.
Ker Memorial Lecture: Accelerating tuberculosis drug development
Despite the advent of Covid-19, tuberculosis (TB) obdurately remains the leading cause of death from a single infectious agent having claimed over a billion human lives in the past two centuries. There are many similarities between the two airborne diseases and much can be learned about controlling Covid-19 from TB.
In the last two decades, intensive efforts have been made by the public and private sectors to discover and develop new diagnostics and therapeutic or prophylactic agents for TB. A promising drug treatment pipeline is now in place and I will describe how this was achieved and how Covid-19 can benefit therefrom.
About the speaker
Stewart studied microbiology at the University of Wales in Cardiff prior to earning his PhD in molecular genetics from the University of Sheffield in 1979. Subsequently, he embarked on a career as a research scientist at the University of Umeå (Sweden) and the Max-Planck-Institut in Tübingen (Germany).
In 1983 he joined the Institut Pasteur (Paris, France), where he rose to be the Scientific Director. In 2007, he moved to the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne where he led a world-class research unit dedicated to TB drug discovery, and served as the Director of the Global Health Institute.
In 2018, Stewart rejoined the Institut Pasteur as its President.
Symposium programme
Edinburgh speaker list
Katie Atkins, Usher Institute – Combining mathematical models and phylogenetics to understand SARS-CoV-2 and HIV
Adam Hayward, Moredun Research Institute – Quantifying the impact of liver fluke on performance in beef cattle
Maddie Moule, School of Biological Sciences – Dissecting the host-pathogen interactions of Mycobacterium tuberculosis dissemination and extrapulmonary spread
Dominic Moran, Global Academy of Agriculture and Food Security – Antimicrobial resistance: an economic primer
Christine Tait-Burkard, Roslin Institute – IFN alpha variants as a treatment and immune-stimulant against SARS-CoV-2 infection
Aaron Trent Irving, Infection Medicine / Zhejiang University – Bats as reservoirs of zoonotic coronaviruses
Lightening talks from Early Career Researchers
Ker Memorial Prize winner
More information
Programme updates and further details wil be posted on the Symposium website.
Please contact Edinburgh Infectious Diseases if you have any questions about the event.