Weekly round-up #120

Weekly Round-up #120

Welcome to VALIDATE Weekly Round-up #120. This week it’s our birthday!

#HappyBirthdayVALIDATE

VALIDATE launched on 1 June 2017 with 36 members in 10 countries. Since then we have grown to over 380 members in 51 countries. As we mentioned in last week’s round up and in our June newsletter, we will be spending the week celebrating our successes on social media.

So please wish us a happy birthday using the #HappyBirthdayVALIDATE on Twitter and LinkedIn and share your VALIDATE stories and pictures.

Welcome to our newest members

This week we are very pleased to welcome two Network Investigators to the VALIDATE Community.

• Prof Heidi Larson is director of The Vaccine Confidence Project and Professor of Anthropology, Risk and Decision Science at LSHTM in the UK, and researches vaccine confidence and hesitancy.
• Prof Mario Alberto Flores-Valdez is based at CIATEJ in Mexico. One of Mario’s research focuses has been to determine whether biofilms are relevant for infection produced by M. tuberculosis-complex bacteria.

New VALID8 interviews

As part of our 3rd birthday revelries we have published two more VALID8 Interviews. We have sat down with two members, one at the very beginning of their career and one established as a world-renowned vaccine researcher:

• Moagi Shaku is a VALIDATE Network Affiliate and PhD candidate at the Centre of Excellence for Biomedical TB Research, Witwatersrand University, South Africa. In his VALID8 interview Moagi talks about the importance of creativity and his work on the next generation of TB vaccines.
• Prof Helen McShane is VALIDATE’s Network Director and Professor of Vaccinology at the Jenner Institute, University of Oxford, UK. Helen talks about working with patients, leadership and leading the first MVA85A efficacy trial in 3,000 infants.