Bringing together the network - Edinburgh Infectious Diseases 14th Annual Symposium

The day began with presentation of the Ker Memorial Prize.  The Prize is awarded each year to the student submitting the best PhD thesis in infectious diseases, and is given in memory of two eminent infectious disease physicians, Drs Claude Buchanan Ker, and his son Frank Leighton Ker.

This year the winner was Dr Catherine Oke, from the School of Biological Sciences, for her PhD thesis on the evolutionary ecology of vector-parasite interactions in malaria infection. 

As the day went on, attendees heard from a number of Edinburgh speakers, showcasing the breadth and depth of infectious disease research happening across Edinburgh. 

We were delighted to welcome Melita Gordon (Usher Institute), who has recently joined the University of Edinburgh, to talk about her work to prevent invasive Salmonella disease in Africa.  

Closer to home, Stew Burgess (Moredun Research Institute) gave a most insightful presentation about sheep scab and efforts to control the disease in Scotland, and Amy Sweeny (School of Biological Sciences) presented work on community ecology & infectious disease, based on study of the wild Soay sheep population on St Kilda.

After lunch, more recent recruits, Richard Wheeler and Maria Forlenza discussed different insights from their research on trypanosomatid parasites, before Ting Shi presented work to develop a sleeper framework protocol for emerging epidemics and pandemics, and Ross Fitzgerald described the inter-species spread and versatility of Staphylococcus aureus.

A large aim of the EID Symposium is to showcase the work of the talented researchers early in their careers. For this year's Symposium, 6 ECRs from across the University presented a 'flash talk'. This format allowed for a talk length of just 4 minutes and a maximum of 3 slides - a tough ask!

Vayalena Drampa and Chris Banks (Roslin Institute), Kalyani Sharma (Institute for Regeneration and Repair) and Josh Richards, Kyriaki Neophytou and Martha Kivecu (School of Biological Sciences) presented work ranging from the rapid diagnostics for urinary tract infection, to replication of influenza A virus, and the origin of Plasmodium falciparum.  

ECRs were praised for their clear presentations and impressive level of work being done. And many thanks to Georgia Perona-Wright for keeping everyone to time!

The plenary talks were broken up with a panel session before lunch led by Matt Silk and Iris Mair (School of Biological Sciences) who were discussing the tough topic of interdisciplinarity and how to work effectively across disciplines.

Audience members participated in a live survey about their experienes of working across disciplines - both the rewards and the challenges.  These shared responses will be taken forward to help develop EID activities that explore and support interdisciplinary approaches.

Throughout the day, 2 poster competitions were run - best student poster and best staff/postdoc poster. Attendees were encouraged to look around the posters during the breaks, talking to the authors about their research and then voting for the poster they thought was the best.

A big congratulations to Anneza Abid from Edinburgh Napier University whose poster 'Host Defence Peptides, LL-37 and D-LL37, as novel therapeutic approaches for Mycobacterial infections' won the best student prize and to Rose Blake from the Roslin Institute whose poster 'Genome-Scale CRISPR-Cas9 Knockout Screen in Avian Cells Identifies Host Factors Essential for Influenza Virus Infections' won the best staff/postdoc prize.

The event was rounded off by Ker Memorial Lecture which was delivered by Professor Andy Waters from the University of Glasgow. Professor Waters' talk 'Malaria parasite transmission: towards the end of the beginning' showcased his 30+ years experience in malaria research, discussing exciting new work to tackle malaria and emergent drug resistance.

We are very grateful to Andy for accepting our invitation and delivering a fantastic lecture.

Professor Andy Waters

Royal College of Physicians 

Annual Symposium event page