News

The 23rd Heremans Lecture, which will be given by Professor Lluis QUINTANA-MURCI, who will enlighten us on the immune response variation: “From Neanderthals to COVID-19: genetic and evolutionary sources of human immune response variation”. 

The lecture will take place on Monday, October 10 at 5:00 PM, in the auditorium A (Lacroix) on the UCL Health Sciences campus in Brussels. It will be followed by a reception at the de Duve Institute.

Professor Quintana-Murci, presently Professor at the Collège de France and Institut Pasteur, is a world-renowned population geneticist. He earned his PhD in Population Genetics at the University of Pavia (Italy), after obtaining a MSc in Biology at the University of Barcelona (Spain). He was a visiting scientist at the universities of Oxford (UK), Tucson (USA), and more recently at the Rockefeller University in New York. Since 2007 he heads the Unit of Human Evolutionary Genetics at the Pasteur Institute, of which he was Scientific Director in 2016-2017. His research focuses on understanding the demographic and adaptive past of human populations, with a strong focus on Africa and the Pacific. He is also interested in how pathogens have exerted selective pressures on the human genome. In this context, his research focuses on the study of the genetic, epigenetic and environmental factors driving variation in human immune responses, as this helps to lay the foundations of precision medicine related to immune-related disorders and infectious diseases such as COVID-19. He has co-authored over 250 publications on fundamental population genetics as well as evolutionary genetics of infection and systems immunology. He is a member of EMBO, the Academia Europaea, and the French Academy of Sciences.

More information is available on the registration page. For security reasons, registration before September 28 is mandatory.

We are excited to present to you “International Microorganism Day 2022”, a day on which we commemorate the discovery of these tiny creatures by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek in 1676.

On Saturday September 17 at the Museum of Natural Sciences in Brussels, we will celebrate microbes with lots of cool science activities and tons of fun facts about microbes and the important role they play in our daily lives. You can find more information in the attached flyer.

You can come and enjoy this event, and the exhibition of the Museum of Natural Sciences, at the reduced price of €10 (instead of €13) when showing this invitation email with flyer. The entry fee for students and children between 4 and 17 years old remains unchanged at €5.

This event is open to all ages and we are looking forward to welcoming you, your friends, kids, parents, neighbors, … there.

See you there!

The Young Belgian Society for Microbiology, YBSM
https://www.internationalmicroorganismday.org/

A unique and globally significant event that will be held at Copernicus Science Center in Warsaw, Poland (29-30th November 2022). The program includes excellent talks, poster presentations, a reception in the French Embassy, and the award ceremony for the L’Oreal UNESCO awards for women scientists.

Registration is now open. Participants can submit their abstracts by September 15th and register by October 15th.

For more information, please visit our website at https://www.pasteur2022.com/.

Join the first UZ Brussel symposium on Microbiome: from benchtop to bedside. View the news post to have a look at the program announcement and registration page.

Dear colleague,

On Friday, September 23, 2022, the newly formed Belgian Society for Viruses of Microbes (BSVoM) will hold their inaugural symposium in Leuven, Belgium. The main mission of our society is to join and boost the Belgian ‘VoM’ community, to stimulate research and to promote interaction between academia, government, and industry.

During this day, three sessions are organized:

• Virus-Host interactions
  • Keynote to be confirmed
• Viral Ecology, evolution and diversity
  • keynote : Prof. Martha Clokie (University of Leicester, UK)
• Present and Future applications
  • keynote 1 : Prof. Zuzanna Drulis-Kawa (ISVM President-Elect; University of Wroclaw, Poland)
  • keynote 2 : Prof. Dr. Willem-Jan Metsemakers (UZ Leuven, Belgium)

If you hold a weak spot for viruses of microbes, we kindly invite you to save the date. More information will be communicated in the coming months.

On behalf of the organizing committee,

Prof. Yves Briers President of the BSVoM

Given the recent governmental decision to lift most of the COVID restrictions, a Covid Safe Ticket (CST) will not be required to participate. Nevertheless, we would like to ask all participants to wear a mouth mask during the symposium, except when eating or drinking.

All tickets have been sold. Please be aware that only participants with a valid symposium ticket can access the event. May we also ask to inform us at info@belsocmicrobio.be in case you will not be able to come, so that we can offer your place to someone else?

Agar art submission extended! We want to inform you that the agar art submission deadline has been extended to March 7. We hereby invite you to participate in the Agar Art competition.

The 28^th International Symposium on Hepatitis C Virus, Flaviviruses, and Related Viruses will take place in Ghent from 6 to 9 July, 2022. Please see flyer for more information.

Symposium registration is closed. All tickets have been sold. Please be aware that only participants with a valid symposium ticket and CST can access the event. Places are still limited due to the current COVID measures. If you cannot attend please inform us as soon as possible in order for us to give the ticket to someone else.

As Belgium switches to ‘code orange’ from 18 February, the symposium will take place as scheduled on-site. Please be aware that compulsory online registration must be completed in advance and that we will work with the COVID safe ticket (CST).

Bring your symposium ticket, valid CST and identity card in addition to a mouth mask – documents will be requested and scanned by stewards before entering the venue.

It is a pleasure to announce the second call for the IS_MIRRI21 TransNational Access (TNA) program that provides financial and logistical support to the scientific and entrepreneurial community across the world for free access to
microbial resource research institutions of 9 IS_MIRRI21 partners across Europe.

IS_MIRRI21 is a Horizon 2020 funded project that aims to implement the pan‑European Microbial Resource Research Infrastructure (MIRRI) as a fully functional entity and secure its long-term sustainability. You can find all necessary information about the TNA  on the website: https://www.mirri.org/services/transnational-access-tna/. The link to the catalogue is: https://www.mirri.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/MIRRI_TNA_Catalogue.pdf. The deadline is on 15 May 2022!