Weekly round-up #101

Epidemiology Vector Illustration

Weekly round-up #101

After two weeks off over the Christmas period, we are happy to be giving you our first news round-up of 2020! We wish a Happy New Year to all of our VALIDATE members.

 

To kick off 2020, we would like to welcome our newly appointed Network Investigator and Network Management Board (NMB) member Dr Álvaro Acosta-Serrano, who will be replacing Prof Paul Kaye who is stepping down from the VALIDATE NMB. A big thank you to Paul for his huge contributions to VALIDATE as an NMB member since 2017, and we are pleased that he will, of course, remain very much part of VALIDATE as an Investigator member. We are excited to have Álvaro join the team, bringing a fresh eye and ideas to our excellent NMB.

 

Secondly, we are delighted to announce that we have found a new VALIDATE Bioinformatician/Computational Biologist. Dr Mirvat Surakhy started this week and will pick up the reins on our data sharing portal, promoting the sharing of data within the VALIDATE Network to find new lessons from cross-pathogen, cross-species and/or cross-country analyses and modelling from all the data already available to our members, in order to advance vaccine research & development for our focus pathogens. Do get in contact with Mirvat if you have data you would like to add to the portal or any ideas for cross research group analyses.

 

We would also like to give a warm welcome to our recently approved Associate members:

  • Dr Wynand Johan Goosen (Stellenbosch University, South Africa).
  • Dr Thanh Kha Phan (La Trobe University, Australia).
  • Dr Wim Adriaensen (Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp, Belgium).
  • Dr Paul Ogongo (University of California, USA)

 

Lastly, a reminder this week that the 8th round of the VALIDATE Training Grants is currently open, with the deadline for applications being 24 Feb 2020. For more details, or to apply, click here.

Funding: 

  • Leprosy Research Initiative - Call for Letters of Intent - Now open for budget round 2021, funding research with a focus on leprosy, including research applications combining leprosy with other NTDs - deadline 28 Feb 2020
  • EDCTP Prizes 2020 - Recognising outstanding individuals and research teams who have made significant achievements in their research field, 4 awards available - deadline for nominations 16 Apr 2020

Find all other funding opportunities on our external funding page.

 

Training Opportunities:

Take a look at our training opportunities page for further ideas for your career development.

Events:

Our events page lists all other upcoming events we've spotted in our field.

 

Job Opportunities: 

You can view all the vacancies in our field on our job webpage.

 

 

 

Publications:

Take a look at our publications page for papers of interest by our members and in the fields of our focus pathogens.

 

Highlights on Twitter this week: advice for PhD students in writing up qualitative research; a BSI article on how to improve the childhood vaccination rate in the UK; Nature gives recommendations for students who are beginning to navigate their own PhD courses; an EDCTP funded clinical trial to evaluate whether a vaccine candidate can prevent TB recurrence; a tutorial on creating and delivering an assertion-evidence presentation of your research; how cases of leishmaniasis are increasing in the USA; a new study of BCG shows being injected intravenously could give better protection against TB; guidance in how to design an effective & engaging scientific poster; the Global Fund announced their highest-ever funding allocations to fight AIDS, TB and malaria; advice to graduates on overcoming writer's block; a Nature article stating that the mental health of PhD researchers needs urgent attention; an incredible 3D video of a female sandfly, 9 days after ingesting Leishmania amastigotes; new app TimBRE can detect TB with over 85% accuracy by listening to the sound of a patient's cough - and congratulations to VALIDATE SAB member Prof Tom Solomon for getting through to the University Challenge alumni finals! All this and more @NetworkVALIDATE where you can easily keep up to date on news and opinions in our field.

 

Published: 8 January 2020