Weekly round-up #197

This will be the last weekly roundup of 2021 so we thought we would take this opportunity to look back over what was a very busy 2021 for VALIDATE:

In January we marked world Leprosy Day with our video "A Vaccine for Leprosy?" featuring Dr Hua Wang.
In February we celebrated the International Day of Women and Girls In Science with a series of infographics featuring some of our women members.
In March we launched BCG100 with our Public Lecture "BCG Then and Now".
In April we held our ECR Collaboration Building workshop.
In May we held our BCG for Schools event, where Prof Michele Miller and Dr Wynand Goosen talked about their pathways to becoming wildlife researchers.
In June Prof Michele Miller returned, joined by Prof Glyn Hewinson, for another BCG100 public lecture 'TB and the Use of BCG in Animals: Does it matter to people'.
In July on Twitter, we celebrated 100 years since the first use of BCG for humans and concluded our #BCG100Facts infographics on Twitter.
In August we announced that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had awarded VALIDATE $1.5 million!
In September, October, and November we held the three days of the VALIDATE Annual Meeting 2021.
In December we launched the next round of our VALIDATE Pump-priming and Training Grants 2022.

Funding:

The Soulsby Foundation Fellowships - Supporting research and other charitable activities associated with promoting the concept of “One Health” among the medical and veterinary professions internationally - Ongoing scheme, apply at any time
BBSRC International Travel Award Scheme, 2021 - International travel awards are for BBSRC-supported researchers making visits to initiate or prepare proposals with international partners - Ongoing scheme, apply at any time
BBSRC Brazil pump-priming award, 2021 - Pump-priming awards supported by BBSRC and the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) are for BBSRC-supported researchers and consortia of academics
ESRC New Investigator Grants, ongoing call, 2020 - 2021 - For post-doc transition to independence; ESRC remit social science (and interdisciplinary) research - Ongoing scheme, apply at any time

You can find a list of all relevant external funding we've spotted for our members on our external funding page.

Training Opportunities and Events:

World Vaccine Congress, Washington DC, USA, 18-22 April 2022

Find more training and events opportunities on our Training and Events pages.

Job Opportunities:

IAVI Bioinformatician IAVI, Nairobi, Kenya, deadline 31 January 2022
IAVI Sr Program Manager, IAVI, Nairobi, Kenya, deadline 31 January 2022
Fellowship: Improving the vaccine-induced immune response in elderly, University of Surrey, UK, deadline 22 January 2022

There are many more relevant career opportunities on our jobs page.

Publications:

Lower IL-7 Receptor Expression of Monocytes Impairs Antimycobacterial Effector Functions in Patients with Tuberculosis, VALIDATE member Adankwah E et al, in The Journal of Immunology
CD4+CCR6+ T cells dominate the BCG-induced transcriptional signature, Singhania A et al, in EBioMedicine

Check out our Publications Page for members' publications and email VALIDATE@ndm.ox.ac.uk if you have a paper you would like us to include.

Highlights on Twitter this week:

We had a look back over 2021 on the VALIDATE YouTube Channel including our World Leprosy Day video, our public lectures TB Then and Now and TB and the use of BCG in Animals, BCG 100 for Schools, the opening session of the Annual Meeting and our BCG Adventures video game trailers. We launched another game, Welcome to Your Immune System on Steam which was announced by WhatsOnSteam, the Jenner Vaccine Trials and The Dollar Game Store (our developers). And WHO launched a survey to expand its offer of online training. Stay up to date with all the relevant news and opportunities by following @NetworkVALIDATE on Twitter.

For VALIDATE and all its members, 2021 was another successful, busy and challenging year. We hope that those who celebrate Christmas get to enjoy the festive season and that everyone has a chance to relax. The VALIDATE office will be closed over the next two weeks for the UK festive season, but we'll be back in the New Year - Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Published: 15 December 2021