It was great to catch up with so many VALIDATE members at the July 2018 Acid Fast Club Meeting in Oxford this week - and a big thank you to the organisers for letting our Network Manager, Sam Vermaak, showcase VALIDATE to the AFC members. There were some really interesting talks and science going on in our field as always!
Excitingly, our abstract to give a talk about VALIDATE at the 9th EDCTP Forum in Lisbon, Portugal, this September has just been accepted, so we look forward to seeing many of our members there - and hopefully bumping into some potential new members too.
Fantastic news is that South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, and Rwandan President Paul Kagame have publically announced that they will attend the 1st ever UN General Assembly meeting on TB this September. We need more World Leaders to join them in prioritising the eradication of TB. Write to your Country's Leader and encourage them to join this crucial meeting - we've created templates so you can do so quickly and easily. Do let us know of any actions you take and responses you have.
Other news in the field this week:
Funding:
For these and many, many more current funding calls, check out our external funding list.
Training opportunities:
In addition, the VALIDATE mentoring scheme is open for applications from Associate and early-PI Investigator members who would like a mentor - read about how a mentor can help accelerate your career, and how to apply through our annual scheme, here.
Events:
Don't forget to put the VALIDATE 2nd Annual Meeting in your diary for 6-7 November 2018 (plus a workshop on the 5th for our Associate and student members) - more details to follow soon on our website.
Papers of interest:
Do let us know when you publish any papers so we can flag them to our members.
On Twitter this week, interesting tweets have included: the world's first live hookworm vaccine entering clinical trial; a funded MSc studentship call from IDeAL and KEMRI; GAVI's Monday Motivation that up to 90% of cervical cancer deaths are now vaccine-preventable through a safe and effective HPV vaccine; a Research Professional article "How to get a postdoc fellowship in the social sciences"; a great interactive infographic where you can see the effect of introducing vaccines at different time points in an outbreak; a Nature post on how doctoral students can use writing meet-ups to overcome isolation and depression; news from Wellcome of a new £250m Leap Fund to back bold ideas; nominations have opened for the OWSD Awards for Early Career Women Scientists - so make sure you get your favourite in!; and how an Ethiopia/USA/Australia collaboration has developed a 3D printed field test kit to diagnose leishmaniasis more cheaply - a great example of what scientists can achieve when they come together to solve a problem!
Finally, a last shout out for our VALIDATE Network Assistant vacancy - get your application in by the 13 July to join our team!
Published: 11 July 2018
